As May takes hold, the crisis brewing inside America’s political system shows no signs of abating; if anything, recent events have only confirmed how serious things have become. On May Day itself, the police moved in to quash the occupation …
Clarence Thomas’s court of diversity
As the case of Donald Trump v. United States continues to chafe America’s social fabric, an unlikely character threatens to steal the ex-President’s limelight: the ever-taciturn Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. The demands for his recusal from the insurrection trial …
The rise of the slacker aristocracy
One is an amateur filmmaker and stay-at-home-dad whose wife is an executive at a financial services firm. Another founded two technology companies and is taking some time out after selling each for millions of dollars. The third supports himself with …
The growing RFK Jr coalition
The Camelot myth haunts Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He was brought up to believe that he would be the one to pick up the mantle left by Arthur, John F. Kennedy. Even as a precocious 20-year-old — having been hooked …
Why London is beating America’s cities
As America’s cities continue to decline, as even ardent boosters warn of “an urban doom loop”, how does London remain a global powerhouse? The straightforward answer is that it retains an old advantage: its origins as a former imperial capital.…
Why the West will refuse to fight
Citizens won’t sacrifice themselvesCitiznsWestern politics is defined by a conflict that is always awkward and sometimes cringe. On the one hand, our leaders are full of loud-mouthed passion, warning that the days of peace are over and that we now …
The mythical masculinity of Donald Trump
As Donald Trump endures the eternity of the next month or so on a wooden bench in a courtroom in lower Manhattan, legions of his followers will decry the legal proceedings against him. They will insist that the claims and …
The fatal flaw in David Lammy’s progressive realism
There is a fundamental problem with David Lammy’s concept of Progressive Realism, the mooted foreign policy doctrine according to which our coming Labour government will manage Britain’s most dangerous strategic environment since the Second World War. Reading through its mixed …
The tyranny of Columbine
The 25 years since the Columbine massacre have given us many occasions — other massacres, alas — to invoke it. But this repetition has had the strange effect of dimming and narrowing our sense of what “Columbine” was in its …
How Antifa went mainstream
In early 2018, I attended a reading at an independent bookstore in the heart of bourgeois Brooklyn. It was to launch the memoir of a Mexican-American former Border Patrol agent who had become disillusioned and quit. To the surprise of …
Iran needs another revolution
Iran’s attack on Israel last week was not a surprise, nor did it inflict significant damage. It was nonetheless a paradigm shift. This was the first long-distance, large-scale drone strike in history — and the first time Iran attacked Israel …
Why RFK Jr is the Silicon Valley candidate
When Robert F. Kennedy Jr revealed that his running mate for the presidency was Nicole Shanahan, ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergei Brin, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the usual suspects. Although Shanahan is successful in her …
Will David Cameron cause WW3?
It’s hard to imagine a better metaphor for the miserable state of UK politics than David Cameron flying across the Atlantic in the hope of convincing America to continue funding a bloody war on Europe’s doorstep — only to fail …
Is Joe Biden gaslighting America?
When it comes to winning a US election, is the answer still “It’s the economy, stupid”? The phrase, memorably articulated by Bill Clinton’s advisor James Carville, suggests that how Americans feel about their personal finances will determine the election outcome. …
The truth about ‘white rural rage’
A good American progressive is meant to disapprove of disparaging political stereotypes. But that hasn’t stopped them gleefully embracing the caricature of the enraged rural American. You know the tropes; they’re the last ones you can utter in respectable conversation: …