Foreigners are mystified by the whole business while thoughtful Americans -- there are several of us -- are equally mystified that the ruling establishment of the country has to be proved to be so mindlessly vindictive that it is willing, to be blunt, to overthrow the lawful government of the United States that is, a President elected in 1992 and re-elected in 1996 by We the People, that sole source of all politicallegitimacy, which takes precedence over the Constitution and the common law and God Himself.

This last was a concept highly uncongenial to the enlightened 18th century founders but not, we are told, to a one-time judge of meagre intellectual capacity, but deep faith in the superstitions that ruling classes encourage the lower orders to believe so that they will not question authority.First, what is the President guilty of? Attempts to prove that he did something criminal 15 years ago in Arkanasas in a real estate deal that came to nothing. Undeterred, Starr kept on searching for ``high crimes and misdemeanours'', as the Constitution puts it.

Meanwhile, in 1994, Congress became Republican and political partisans are now revelling in the political paralysis of the Democratic White House. According to Starr, the fate of the Republic now depends upon whether or not Clinton lied under oath when he denied having had sexual relations with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, assuming anyone can define,satisfactorily, a sexual relation.

A few years a ago, two pollsters did an elaborate study of a wide spectrum of the American population. Many questions were asked on many subjects. The results were published in a book called The Day America Told the Truth, not a confidence-inspiring title when more than 90 per cent of those polled confessed to being ``habitual liars''. That the President of such an electorate should lie about sex makes him more sympathetic than not.

Certainly, if so irrelevant a question was asked of George Washington, he would have run Starr through with his sword, while Abraham Lincoln would have thrown him out of the window.

But irrelevance is now the American condition, both as a global empire and incoherent domestic polity. Two thirds of all the world's lawyers are American and they have made a highly profitable, for them, mess of our legal system. They could not prove in the Fifties, that Alger Hiss had been a spy for the Soviets, so they sent him to prison on an unconvincingperjury charge. Al Capone was never convicted of murder or extortion. Unable ever to be relevant to what is the true case, we make not telling the truth under oath the crime of crimes. This is law in its decadence.

After four years, Starr has found no crime that Clinton has committed except denying a sexual relationship with Monica, which she has already said, under oath never took place but now says, under oath and with a wink from Starr for her previous perjury, did take plae. The President's Attorney General Janet Reno, with the connivance of two right-wing senators (one is Jesse Helms, tobacco's best friend) and a panel of three right-wing judges, came up with Starr as special prosecutor to investigate Whitewater and then anything else that might undo the results of two presidential elections.What is behind this vendetta against Clinton, a popular President? First, the most powerful emotion in American political life is the hatred of certain Whites for all Blacks. For American Blacks, Clinton is a whiteknight. This brings us to the Clintons' other nemesis: the wealthy, conservative ruling class. In order to avoid taxation, they have through their lawyers, placed their capital in tax-free foundations for ``charitable foundations''. Conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife uses his to meddle in politics. A year or so ago, Scaife rewarded Starr with a professorship at Pepperdine University. Presumably, Starr will be paid off by Scaife once his holy work is done. Every society gets the Titus Oates it deserves.

Mrs Clinton is correct when she says there is a vast right wing conspiracy against them. Unfortunately for her, Americans have been trained by media to go into Pavlovian giggles at the mention of the word conspiracy because for an American to believe in a conspiracy he must also believe in flying saucers.

Mrs Clinton, perhapes, emphasises too heavily on right wing aspect of her enemies. It is corporate America, quite wingless in political as opposed to money matters, that declared war on theClintons in 1993, when the innocent couple tried to give the American people a national health insurance service, something every civilised country has but Americans must never enjoy because the insurance companies now get one-third of the money spent on health care and the insurance companies are the cash cows of corporate America.

Not content with the political destruction of the Clintons' health plan, corporate America decided to destroy their reputations. Nothing personal in this by the way. But how else can the ownership of the country send a warning to other feckless politicians that the country and its people exist to make money for corporations now so internationalised that they cannot be made to pay tax on much -- if any -- of their profits? Starr is now the most visible agent of corporate America weilding a new weapon: endless legal harassment of a twice-elected President, thus keeping him too busy to exercise his office as first magistrate.