In Europe, especially in France, anti-Americanism fundamentally structures political life and thought. In its most extreme forms, it embodies a whole way of interpreting the world. Explanation by means of America offers us the vertiginous feeling of the panoramic and allows us to embrace the totality of the real. If America didn't exist, we'd have to invent it: upon what other convenient scapegoat could we so conveniently load our sins and dump our garbage? Where else would we find such a place to whitewash the crimes of the planet, since anything that goes wrong on earth, from global warming to terrorism, can be laid at America's door? It's a stroke of good luck for a dictatorship or a criminal gang finally to be chased down and singled out by the United States.