Last night’s presidential debate was described as “the most consequential presidential debate in modern American history” so many times that no one bothered to ask just why that was so. For one thing, it could only be described as consequential …
Trump vs Harris is just a front
When Donald Trump and Kamala Harris step into the ring this evening, America will be treated to an illusion. For the past month, we’ve been told that tonight’s showdown in Pennsylvania will be pivotal — that, finally, the nation will …
Will Trump make me Poet Laureate?
After President Biden’s farewell debate, I had a problem. It was evident that Donald Trump would win. I fantasised that he would offer me the post of Poet Laureate, and I wondered if I would accept. After all, Washington D.C. …
How the Democrats can win the Rust Belt
Almost every week, Herman heads over to the local gun club, where he can reliably find some of his buddies — old union friends from the steel mills and others. They hang out in the bar room of the clubhouse, …
Trump’s Red Scare will backfire
And so we enter the beginning of the end. After months of insecurity, Democrats have united behind Kamala Harris as their nominee, while Republicans seem to have adjusted their messaging in response to their new opponent. The election finale is …
Will we embrace AI fetishism?
In parts of Thailand, thanks to a confluence of modern technology and traditional beliefs, a peculiar transport service has emerged. The anthropologist Scott Stonington calls them “spirit ambulances”. Some Thai Buddhists feel morally obliged to preserve the life of an …
The Democrats have pulled off a miracle
Making an elephant disappear is a notoriously difficult test of the magician’s art. Turning a flower girl into a duchess might be even harder to pull off. Convincing the world’s most powerful man to agree to give up his job …
How Kamala avoided the Clinton trap
Does America care that it is once again on the cusp of voting for its first female president? So confident was Hillary Clinton at the DNC in 2016 that she appeared triumphantly on screen to images of breaking glass. She …
The ugly conversion of Candace Owens
When Lord Farmer took to X to “put my own views on antisemitism and Israel’s current military campaign on public record” after “public comments from a high-profile member of my family”, I felt the same thrill as if I’d discovered …
The speech Kamala owes America
In March 2008, in the heat of his campaign for president, Barack Obama suddenly found himself at the edge of an abyss. The former black pastor at his Chicago church, Jeremiah Wright, whom Obama had known for 20 years, was …
Why America stopped dreaming
I set off last Wednesday on a three-week road trip around the United States. I had high expectations drizzled in nostalgia, since I was repeating a project I’d done exactly nine years before: the idea, then and now, was to …
Why America stopped dreaming
I set off last Wednesday on a three-week road trip around the United States. I had high expectations drizzled in nostalgia, since I was repeating a project I’d done exactly nine years before: the idea, then and now, was to …
The march of Kamala’s brides
In a recent appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists, Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump caused a furore by questioning the racial “identity” of Democrat Kamala Harris. “Is she Indian or is she black?” Trump wondered. “I respect either …
Is Trump a perverted Emersonian?
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light
which flashes across his mind from within, more than the
lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses
without notice his thought, because it is …
Why Trump is winning outside of America
Across much of the Euro-Atlantic, Donald Trump is an object of derision. The list of his foreign-policy sins is long: He’s callous towards his Nato allies and disdainful towards multilateral institutions and treaties. He introduced a “Muslim ban” and has …