In a radio address to the nation, delivered in 1943 as the tide of war was beginning to turn, Franklin Roosevelt surveyed the progress on America’s home front as it churned out materiel at lightning pace: “I saw thousands of …
How abduction panic became big business
Why did Phoebe Copas shoot her Uber driver? The 48-year-old got into a car driven by Daniel Piedra Garcia on June 16 thinking she was heading to El Paso in Texas. But when she saw a sign reading “Juárez, Mexico” …
Biden’s IRA hasn’t saved America
The Inflation Reduction Act was supposed to be “one of the most significant laws in our history”. When Joe Biden signed it into law last year, he heralded it as proof that “the American people [had] won and the special …
Hillary Clinton still doesn’t get it
Let’s indulge in some nostalgia for a moment. It’s Nineties America and “political apathy” is the complaint on every politician’s lips. The end of the Soviet Union is a recent memory and Western democracy has emerged triumphant, though the average …
Hip-hop: the last bastion of American freedom
On 11 August 1973, there was a party at an apartment building at 1520 Sedgewick Avenue in the Bronx. The host, Cindy Campbell, was a black immigrant teenager from Jamaica who wanted to earn some extra cash to buy back-to-school …
Stop comparing the West to Rome
On both sides of the Atlantic, hysterical comparisons between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the senile polities of the modern West have become the journalistic norm. Every major problem facing our society — from climate change to Covid …
America is now a zombie state
“Every nation gets the government it deserves,” wrote the philosopher Joseph de Maistre, and some are getting it good and hard right now. De Maistre’s moral interpretation of politics admits of exceptions, but the United States in 2023 is not …
What really causes Trump Anxiety Disorder?
Donald Trump stops me sleeping, and I am not alone. The multiply indicted former president’s fans sneeringly call it “Trump Derangement Syndrome”. Psychologists, who since 2016 have seen a rise in people anxious about the state of the world, call …
The Donald Trump Monster Movie
In Hollywood sci-fi movies from the Fifties, there is often a moment when the US military drops an atomic bomb on a monster. It then invariably emerges from the radioactive cloud unscathed — to the disappointment and horror of those …
California leaves its poor to burn
“A call went out, and I could see the fire outside. In the back of my head, I was like ‘Hey, this is just another fire — the fire department’s going to stop it and save my house. I’m going …
Tucker Carlson’s accidental confession
At the end of the Nineties, I called Tucker Carlson to ask his advice. I was about 20. He spoke kindly to me, and I liked him.
He had started his Washington career working for the Right-leaning Weekly Standard magazine. …
DeSantis has failed America’s charisma test
American politics today presents something of a paradox. Levels of ideological polarisation have reached a height not seen since the eve of the Civil War, seemingly overriding all other considerations. Yet personality still matters as much as ever in presidential …
The arrogance of dismissing aliens
It is not often that congressional hearings launch a golden week of memes. Last Wednesday, a subcommittee began questioning former Air Force intelligence officer David Grusch, who has accused the US Department of Defence of concealing a long-standing programme that …
The impossible truth about Afghanistan
In “The Impossible Fact”, the 20th-century German poet Christian Morgenstern tells the story of an academic who undergoes a traumatising experience. He staggers home, wraps damp cloths around his forehead and collapses into his armchair to process what has happened. …
Digital oligarchs have weaponised the banks
The debanking of Nigel Farage demonstrates the power of a law that is already being enforced without having been formalised. Found guilty of crimes by state censors, secret committees of bureaucrats, or inscrutable algorithms, individuals can be disconnected and de-personed …