Body horror dwells in the fear of damage that cannot be undone. It involves stories of skin, and limbs, and teeth, and eyes — precious and irreplaceable, now scarred or severed or irrevocably changed. In some versions, the Icarus stories, …
The trial of America’s progressive prosecutors
“Getting here was the easy part,” Chesa Boudin said in a victory speech after his 2019 election to the position of San Francisco district attorney. Three years later, despite presiding over a steep descent into lawlessness in the city on …
How we gave up on the future
Once upon a time, a teenager called Sarah was looking for a Father’s Day present for her dad, Jim. For hours she scoured the bazaars of St Albans, but none had quite what she wanted. The sunshine began to fade, …
Only a monarch can control the elites
It’s a little-known fact that Shakespeare hated Americans. At least, when in Twelfth Night Sir Andrew Aguecheek said “I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician”, he meant the same impertinent little cult that would later set out …
Only a monarch can control the elites
It’s a little-known fact that Shakespeare hated Americans. At least, when in Twelfth Night Sir Andrew Aguecheek said “I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician”, he meant the same impertinent little cult that would later set out …
How Texas can stop mass shootings
A child smearing her friend’s blood on herself in an attempt to play dead. Agonised parents waiting to learn if their children had survived. The death of teacher Irma Garcia’s husband immediately after she was shot and killed, leaving their …
California needs a recession
Nowhere is better suited for flights of fancy than California, a place of miraculous growth and remarkable innovation. A backwater barely a century ago, with just over 3 million residents compared to nearly 40 million today, the Golden State has …
Why young men become shooters
Rampage shooters tend to be losers. The archetype of the modern school shooter, Eric Harris, frequently wrote in his diary about his feelings of alienation and resentment over his lack of social success. “I just want to be surrounded by …
How America went berserk
My sister is a teacher in America, which means she has had to teach her fourth-grade students about how to defend themselves against people who might walk into her public school with guns. Once, during a false alarm, her class …
Why Baltimore didn’t defund the police
In Baltimore the protests that followed the death of George Floyd felt less like an eruption and more like a mellow reprisal of events that had taken place five years earlier. The death of Freddie Gray in police custody had …
The truth about the Buffalo shooting
After the horrific racist mass shooting of 13 people — 11 of them black — in a Buffalo, New York supermarket, it is vital to ask what caused such violence. For some progressives, the answer is already clear: Republicans, notably …
The narcissism of America’s race politics
The Romans loved their Saturnalia. For one week, every year, social customs were overturned in the spirit of carnival: gambling was permitted and slaves were treated as kings. The literary critic Northrop Frye was fascinated by this festival, and saw …
How baby formula trapped women
There are few topics that provoke the same depth of feeling among new mothers as breastfeeding. Is breast best? Should formula feeding mums be criticised? This acutely sensitive debate came roaring out of the posset-stained and sleep-deprived world of new …
The twilight of identity politics
During the 2016 Democratic primary Hillary Clinton began to enthusiastically deploy identitarian arguments against Bernie Sanders. Her media surrogates derided his supporters as straight white “brocialists”. Bernie Bros were guilty of “mansplaining” anti-capitalism to the nation’s minorities and aspiring young …
Buffalo and the myth of racist America
What connects the tragedies of May 25, 2020, and May 14, 2022? The straightforward answer, at least according to many in the media and on the Left, is systemic racism.
On May 25, 2020, a black man was murdered in …
