The faster American culture spreads, the less foreigners seem to understand it. In October, the Irish novelist Anne Enright shared a few thoughts about the US elections. “[T]hese politics are playing out in some secret part of the American psyche,” …
The Californication of Texas
When I first moved to Texas in 2006, I spent several months living with my in-laws in Georgetown, a quiet town of about 46,000 people located 30 miles north of Austin. There was a giant house in their neighbourhood that …
Why Joe Biden must save himself — and quit
When I first met Joseph Biden as a newly elected Senator in 1974 he was absurdly young and looked younger, but he had already suffered two tragedies: the financial downfall of his father from elegant affluence to poverty, and the …
Women are losing the abortion election
Ever since the Dobbs decision redefined the reproductive rights of American women, the issue of choice has started to resemble a frantic game of ping-pong. In red states, Republican-controlled senates immediately got busy passing abortion bans, sometimes in direct opposition …
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 …
How the Democrats betrayed the Jews
I grew up in a tiny Jewish enclave on Chicago’s South Side. When I first saw New York, in the Sixties, I was awed as by no subsequent marvel of nature: stretching north from Columbus Circle, up the West Side, …
Immigration is religion’s only hope
When my father was going through the process of becoming an Elder in the United Methodist Church, he was required to take courses on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. One course involved a presentation on how white people needed to make …
Why America’s elderly elite won’t quit
You don’t have to be old to be confused. Years ago, when I was still a walk-over-hot-coals BBC reporter — or so I thought — I finished an interview, made a dash for the exit, and ended up in a …
Manchin’s No Labels party could backfire
Third-party candidates in America don’t make history. But last week the senior senator for West Virginia made headlines, at least. Joe Manchin is hinting that he might run for the presidency in 2024, representing a new “No Labels” party advocating …
The Asian-American class war
In the metropolises of the West, shops that sell bubble tea — or boba, as it is commonly known — have proliferated over the past few years, a microcosm of the boom in East Asian cultural exports. At the same …
Is Casey DeSantis the next Jackie Kennedy?
The critics of Casey DeSantis, wife to Republican presidential hopeful, Ron, can’t decide which derogatory stereotype they think best describes her. She’s been everything from a conniving Lady Macbeth in the carapace of a Disney princess, to a wannabe glamour …
The rise of the liberal apostate
In an age of darkness, glimpses of light are rare — but all the brighter for it. As the censorious progressivism embraced by Joe Biden and much of his Democratic party grows into an increasingly pervasive quasi-religion, ordinary people are …
Rescuing Ireland won’t save Biden
President Biden may have received a rapturous welcome in Ireland yesterday, but Democratic strategists in Washington will have taken little notice. With next year’s election looming, they increasingly look like they are stuck with a candidate who most in the …
Can Biden shield America from its loony Left?
To the Right, he is the senile puppet of “woke” plutocrats; to the Left, he is a corpse filling a blue suit while corporations steer the ship of state. But if you look at the facts, President Joe Biden appears …
How Bill Clinton created post-truth America
While Bill Clinton was campaigning to be President in 1992, the singer Gennifer Flowers gave several interviews in which she named him as her long-term lover. Clinton denied it, of course. It was one of the many lies that he …