Here we go again. About 30 minutes into counting the first votes of the Iowa caucus, the Associated Press, CNN, NBC and various other news networks called it for Donald Trump.
There was little doubt that the former president wasn’t …
Why American cities are squalid
The Thursday before Christmas, I woke up in downtown Sofia, leisurely drank a coffee, and jumped on a metro that took me directly to the airport. In less than an hour, I was at the gate for my flight to …
Is Iowa the next step to civil war?
In the silence of the Civil War’s Antietam battlefield on a winter day, bucolic hills give way to rows of small, white gravestones in the nearby cemetery. Wandering over the deadliest ground in American history, a melancholy visitor may be …
The Sopranos is a Freudian comedy
Thinking back on The Sopranos over the years, I’ve granted a sort of holy status to the scene in “Second Opinion” (Season 3, Episode 7) where Carmela is bluntly lectured by an elderly psychiatrist. She’s expecting some gentle double-talk from …
Should Britain lead the war in Yemen?
“The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living,” Karl Marx observed. When it comes to British military adventurism in the Middle East, that certainly rings true.
The recent history of British interventions …
How the West can stop the Houthis
With armed Houthi rebels prowling the Red Sea, attacking cargo ships and holding crew at gunpoint, America and its allies appear to be preparing for war. When asked about potential strikes in Yemen earlier this week, the UK Defence Secretary, …
Who will fight for Britain?
The year I was born, one of the most famous New Wave songs of all time was released: Elvis Costello’s “Oliver’s Army”. It was written after Costello visited Northern Ireland during the Troubles. There, he described seeing “mere boys walking …
The Right has embraced cancel culture
The hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman has had a busy few months. Mere days after the October 7 attacks, he was calling for the names of any university students who signed letters blaming Israel to be added to a public …
The labyrinth of Guy Davenport’s mind
Born nearly a century ago, Guy Davenport was unclassifiable. Was he a poet or a polymath? An artist or an eccentric philosopher? As a new collection of his essays is published, John Jeremiah Sullivan recalls his laughter, tears and wit……
Trump could be good for Europe
Europe should not be insouciant about the prospect of a second Trump term. As many have pointed out, he would be more radical than the first time round. Everything that has happened since 2020 will have confirmed Trump’s instinct that …
Claudine Gay and the mafia of mediocrity
What do Nasra Abukar Ali and Claudine Gay have in common? Or, for that matter, the Somali Ministry of Sports and the Harvard Corporation?
The answer is straightforward: both Ali and Gay came unprepared onto a major public stage, failed …
The propaganda that damned Ukraine
The way the American media has dealt with the Ukraine War brings to mind a remark credited to Mark Twain: “The researches of many commentators have already thrown much darkness on this subject, and it is probable that, if they …
The propaganda that damned Ukraine
The way the American media has dealt with the Ukraine War brings to mind a remark credited to Mark Twain: “The researches of many commentators have already thrown much darkness on this subject, and it is probable that, if they …
The world should fear 2024
When asked in 2020 to envisage the world after Covid, Michel Houellebecq proclaimed, accurately enough, that “it will be the same, just a bit worse”. As this year slams to a bloody close, it does not take a soothsayer to …
Gen Z’s radical race politics
It’s a dreary day in a provincial English town. A tracksuit-wearing teenage boy affecting an exaggerated version of the “Jafaican”, which has replaced Cockney as the capital’s working-class dialect, asks a similarly dressed individual: “What nationality is the best to …