A recurring theme in C.P. Cavafy’s poems is of the elites in some Hellenistic city in the Near East, long subsumed into the Roman empire, anxiously awaiting news from the imperial centre of the outcome of a great …
MAGA Republicans are nothing new
Just in case you haven’t spent the last week gripped by the question of who the Republicans would choose to nominate as their candidate for President of the United States, here’s the news: it was him. But it wasn’t exactly …
The new Donald Trump didn’t last long
“I’m not supposed to be here.” “Yes you are!” the crowd chanted back.
Six days before last night’s speech, Republican National Convention volunteers were in the middle of receiving training when news landed of the assassination attempt and they hit …
Why liberals envy JD Vance
If you want to know the secret of J.D. Vance’s meteoric rise, at the age of 39, to Donald Trump’s choice for vice president should he win, just glance at some of the more overheated liberal analyses of Vance’s success. …
The 2024 political war is just beginning
In a moment of raw personal courage at local fair-grounds in Butler, Pennsylvania, Donald Trump upended America’s presidential race by surviving an assassin’s bullet and then leaping to his feet and punching the air while proclaiming “USA!” and “Fight! Fight! …
The 2024 political war is just beginning
In a moment of raw personal courage at local fair-grounds in Butler, Pennsylvania, Donald Trump upended America’s presidential race by surviving an assassin’s bullet and then leaping to his feet and punching the air while proclaiming “USA!” and “Fight! Fight! …
Why Trump needs the swarm
Regardless of the motivation behind the attempt to assassinate Donald Trump, it’s striking to consider that this is effectively the second recent attempt to eliminate a nominated candidate for Leader of the Free World. While there was no AR-15 trained …
The shot that created a martyr
In roisterous social discourse, I’ve repeatedly expressed my amazement that no one has ever taken a shot at Trump. I’ve even tossed off callously, “Where’s American gun nuttery when you need it?” (Sorry.) But until Saturday evening, the former president …
The terrible echo of 1968
“I was 10 years old when my uncle was assassinated and I remember it like it was yesterday,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr on Fox News, hours after a bullet skimmed the side of Donald Trump’s head. Kennedy recalled the …
Trump has mainstreamed the radical Right
In the wake of Biden’s rambling press conference, his answers dishonestly and mechanically padded with campaign boilerplate that wandered far away from the questions — you could see the Scotch tape on his synapses — America is wondering to what …
Why I’m sticking with Joe
Remember Kamala Harris laughing throatily on the phone to Joe Biden after they’d dumped Trump in 2020? “We did it, Joe. We did it. You’re gonna be the next President of the United States.”
Erotic, I thought. The hottest words …
The true President of America’s Fifth Republic
The fireworks in America this Fourth of July will be fuelled by the country’s imminent election, in which a convicted felon faces off against a doddering old man who is too senile to know that he isn’t really the President. …
Will Biden share Bannon’s fate?
All eyes are naturally fixed upon Joe Biden in the aftermath of last week’s “debate”. Will he stay in the race or bow out? Yet there is another, smaller political drama playing out inside the American political system at present, …
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 …
Trump is converting America’s nuns
Bespectacled and berobed, a softly spoken nun may seem an unlikely figurehead for the hard-Right of American politics — but Mother Miriam of the Lamb of God isn’t just any nun. With her broadsides against liberalism, President Biden, and Satan’s …