IT was late summer at the Republican Convention in New York City – just a few months before Dubya was re-elected president in 2004. The razzmatazz was just ramping up, and the ConJocks had been unleashed among the delegates. The ConJocks – or Convention Jockeys – were perky, pretty, all-American girls in their early 20s, mostly comprised of brilliantine white teeth and ironed blonde hair. They leapt about babbling party propaganda on tax, war and family values while interviewing delegates on the convention floor.

The interviews were relayed live onto huge plasma screens inside a fortified Madison Square Garden, the convention’s incongruous venue. When the ConJocks weren’t ra-ra-ing for the right-wing, images of soldiers, helicopters and aircraft carriers filled the screens. Around them, the hall was plastered with slogans such as A Nation Of Courage, A People Of Compassion, A Land Of Opportunity. When the screens weren’t blasting out a Republican version of MTV, the floor was given over to the biggest beasts in the Republican zoo.

Guys such as Arnie Schwarzenegger, who only had to tell the audience that the Democrats were “economic girlie-men” for the floor to erupt in cheers as if he’d just killed an evil robot in Terminator V: The Rise Of The Neo-Cons. The other heroes of demagoguery included Rudi Giuliani, the mayor of New York on September 11. Despite looking like the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang he was cheered to the echo each time he mentioned 9/11 – and he mentioned it over and over again. Not one opportunity was missed to conflate America’s tragedy with Saddam’s Iraq. It felt like New York’s suffering was being exploited right in front of the city’s face.

Then out came the paralysed cops, the old soldiers, the firefighters – the message was clear: the world’s a dangerous place, and the sitting president is the man to keep you safe. The few protesters who somehow managed to sneak in were bundled off by secret service agents the second they tried to suggest the world was only a more dangerous place because president Bush is in it. This was political Big Top – with spin-doctors as ringmasters.

Outside the convention centre, New York looked like it was under martial law. Madison Square Garden was a ring of steel; giant spy blimps – replete with adverts for camera companies – hovered in the sky; suicide bomb barriers surrounded the conference; mounted police, motorcycle cops, squads of officers on foot, the National Guard and secret service agents (wearing flak jackets with the words “Secret Service” printed on them) closed off streets to the north, south, east and west. The city was paranoid and hysterical.

Inside the conference, Bush was evangelising to his flock. After he’d reduced them to tears with his talk of “returning the salute of wounded soldiers”, and “holding the children of the fallen”, cardinal Egan – God’s emissary on earth for the Republican Party – said a prayer for America, describing the nation as a “city set on a mountain-top from which all mankind might draw strength, inspiration and hope”. As Laura Bush and her toothy children came on stage amid the red, white and blue ticker-tape, confetti and balloons, the PA system kicked in to the tune of Put A Little Love In Your Heart, bringing Bush’s oration to a close.

With the Republican masses on their feet, I felt it was definitely time to go … but on the way out, I see a vision of all-American loveliness before me. Jenny Hanning, a fashion student from Texas, is standing there looking like a stunning cartoon. Her knee-boots are red, white and blue, her hair is Rita Hayworth scarlet, her blouse is white and her denim skirt blue. It’s all topped off with a stetson and a star- spangled neckerchief. “President Bush will protect us,” she tells me. “He’s dealt with Iraq and he is taking a stand against abortion and gay marriage. Gay marriage, you know, sir, has been the cause of the fall of several civilisations over the course of history. And he stood up to France!”

After Jenny’s wit and wisdom I decide it’s time to go on my way again – bumping into the varying faces of Bushism, the way Gulliver bumped into midgets, giants and talking horses. Rabbi David Stone, a Republican delegate, tells me that the creation of a Palestinian state which encroaches on the “Biblical borders” of Israel is tantamount to rewarding terrorists – something the Democrats would do. “I’m a Republican and a Bush supporter because the Republicans and president Bush support Israel.”

I see Linda White, with the words “Blondes For Bush” emblazoned across her tight white T-Shirt. “I love my president!” she hollers. Mike Brown, a body-building attorney from Long Island, is so pumped up – both with muscles and patriotism – that he looks like his head is about to burst. Everything he says is about strength – the president is strong, his speech was strong, Bush will make America strong. “Four more years!” shouts Brown .

I cross the road to the Tick Tock Diner and get a drink. At the bar, there’s an off-duty cop, drunk – he’s one of the few indigenous New Yorkers I’ve met who actually likes Bush. His eyes are swimming in Apple Sourz and he says: “We need Bush. I’ve heard that the Brooklyn Bridge is gonna get al-Qaeda-ed, man.” Night falls, and the bridge stands.

I meet Ann and Bill Bunting the next day for lunch in the Tick Tock. Before we even order our turkey sandwiches, which turn out to be the size of a boxer’s fist, Ann begins to freak out. She thinks she’s seen Michael Moore a few tables away. Sure, the guy she’s spotted is overweight, beardy and has a baseball cap, but he’s certainly not the film-maker-cum-Devil-incarnate for Republicans that Ann thinks he is.

Moore isn’t the only thing that Ann’s paranoid about: Canada, socialism, Democrats, France, the liberals she has to endure in life, gun control, abortion, gays, terrorism – her phobias, hates and fears stretch on like Eighth Avenue. Only Dubya is the man to soothe Ann’s worries. Her husband Bill is a bit like the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. I’m not sure if he wanted to rip off my head and spit down my neck, but he sure looked twitchy whenever I questioned any of his beliefs. He’s a gun instructor with a collection of some 75 shooters including German Lugers from the second world war.

Ann and Bill are up from Florida, where Bill is a Republican county chairman – that makes him a pretty big wheel in the party. The couple have taken two young Republicans under their wing for the duration of the delegation: Nate Pattee and Paul Cordes from the heartlands of Nebraska. Now, I’m a boy from Northern Ireland, but if I’d arrived in London aged 17 with a pig under my arm and a velvet suit of finest green I couldn’t have looked more out of place than poor Nate and Paul. Walking around wearing cowboy hats with “Vote For Dick” badges – Dick being Cheney – sporting blazers, stripey ties, pressed shirts, nice slacks, brogues and little flag pins in your lapel is no way to fit in when you’re in liberal New York.

Nate was told to “go f*** himself” as he walked into the diner and someone had “flipped him the bird” a few moments before. He looks a little put out by how forthright some Democrats can be. Paul got a “hard time” from his teachers, he says, before he left his home town to attend the convention, when he set up a Young Republican Club in his school because the sex education classes were “way too left”.

Ann settles right down to what gets her goat the most – those damn liberals not letting her pack a piece wherever she goes. Ann loves guns the way a squirrel loves nuts – the world just wouldn’t be the same without them. She’s a college English teacher and she’s fizzing that her “so-called liberal” colleagues don’t want her taking her shooting iron onto the campus. “In order to be free you have to be armed. It’s a question of independence, self-protection, self-assertion, self-confidence. It’s basic to being an American.”

Welcome to the Two Americas, a land as polarised as it was in the 1960s, when the nation was riven by race, war and morality … just as it is now. This national culture war is also fuelling global war, however. Bush supporters voted for family, faith and flag – and, as a by-product, gave the President a mandate to pursue four more years of aggressive foreign policy – with Britain dragged along as an ever trusty sidekick.

God and the gun are at the heart of government, Bill believes. “Our founding fathers based the constitution on Judeo-Christian values. Our coins say ‘In God We Trust’. What we have is a nation divided. The atheists have their beliefs and that’s fine but don’t try and force that agenda on these young people sitting here.”

The culture clash is as much on the table at the Tick Tock as the ubiquitous yellow mustard. Bill adds that John Kerry can go marry Teddy Kennedy in Massachusetts for all he cares – but they better not come down to Florida. Paul and Nate look up from their cokes. Paul sallies forth with his opinions on abortion (bad, evil) and the death penalty (good, just). The conversation turns to tax. I mention the homeless folk sleeping on the sidewalks of NYC – including an old, mentally ill Vietnam vet I’d met called Barney. He was so out of it, he didn’t even realise the prez was in town. How do the Buntings want to help broken-down old soldiers like Barney if they basically don’t want to pay taxes?

The answer: faith-based organisations (in other words, church handouts). “It’s not an accident that in the short history of the USA this country has been the most productive and creative society on earth,” says Ann. “Look at our technology, music, motion pictures, telecommunications, computers, manned flight, mass production, pharmaceuticals. Why? Because we have a free market system that rewards entrepr-eneurs and creativity.

“In socialist countries you don’t have that vibrant dynamic going on.” Ann and Bill don’t live in the America of crowded prisons, poverty, drug addiction, plummeting education standards, declining health, ramshackle housing, minimum wage, redundancies and union busting. The middle-class America that Ann and Bill live in has no idea that the Barneys of this world even exist.

Ann shouts at me when I ask if, as a teacher, she doesn’t think all education should be free. “Why should it be free!?” she hollers. Bill calms her down and says that they are just both angry about “liberals stepping on our rights” and “living off our backs”. I ask them if they want to come to the Panty Protest with me, down at Battery Park. A whole squad of women are getting ready to line up and flash their knickers, bearing slogans like “F*** Bush”.

More than 200,000 people protested against the Republicans that week, but I reckoned the Panty Protest was the one to watch. The guys politely decline my invitation. Paul and Nate don’t seem to want any more hassle from the anti-Bush crowd filling the streets of Manhattan.

I ask Nate what’s the hardest thing about being a kid on the right of American politics. He takes off his cowboy hat, scratches his short, sensibly-cut hair and says: “I guess, it’s that nobody thinks it’s cool to be a Republican any more.” I pick up the bill and head off to watch the Panty Protest.

This is an edited extract from The War On Truth (sundayheraldbooks, £7.99), which is published on October 23

www.thewarontruth.com