“I know something you don’t know” is one of the most elementally effective sentences in our language. It’s a blatant hook for attention, so instantly powerful that even small children set it to a taunting little tune and dangle it …
Steve Bannon is ready for war
“Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. He wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values, or traditions.” Steve Bannon doesn’t hold back when I meet him in the basement of …
Not all federal bureaucrats are woke
Several years ago, I quit my post as a professor at a respected state university to join the US federal workforce. This was a painful decision. I thoroughly enjoyed academia. I loved mentoring students, exploring novel ideas, and engaging with …
The rise of Yuppiefuturism
Legions of Patrick Bateman lookalikes, clad in power suits and smoking cigarettes. YMCA plays on repeat. Twenty-five years on from the release of American Psycho, the Yuppies are finally back. And it’s Donald Trump who is responsible.
Yet, this isn’t …
Can America control its oligarchs?
When you hear the word “oligarch”, you might imagine someone like Farkhad Akhmedov, one of the 50 wealthiest Russians. In his book Mastering the Universe, economics professor Rob Larson writes that Akhmedov’s personal superyacht features a pair of helipads, a …
Elon Musk is a danger to Trumpism
Last month, in one of his final acts as outgoing director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Rohit Chopra proposed to restrict financial institutions from dropping customers based on their political or religious views. If adopted, the rule would …
What is Bill Gates afraid of?
At a moment when the world’s most revered humanitarian faces growing public scrutiny and a fading public profile, what does he do? Try to change the narrative. Over the past year, we’ve seen Bill Gates embark on a powerful PR …
Why Trump turned on the unions
On Tuesday, Donald Trump ousted two of the strongest union advocates at the National Labor Relations Board: board member Gwynne Wilcox and general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo. While the firing of Abruzzo is par for the course with the arrival of …
Donald Trump’s second coming
The Donald Trump who will begin his second term today is a bigger political bruiser than the neophyte who arrived in Washington after his shocking 2016 upset of Hillary Clinton. The White House he has assembled is a more formidable …
How Joe Biden wasted his presidency
In his farewell address to the nation on Wednesday, President Biden warned that “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy”. He went on to explicitly echo his predecessor …
Why Europe fears free speech
We all know the old joke: when a European referendum delivers the “wrong” outcome, the country votes again until they get it “right”. The EU thought this would be the case after Brexit. But so far, no one’s laughing.
If …
Is Elon the new Enoch?
In the opening of E. H. Gombrich’s A Little History of the World, there’s a lovely metaphor of the work of an historian. History, he writes, is like a bottomless well stretching into eternity, visible only by human recollection falling …
Elon Musk: neo-feudal prince
In a surreal cascade of events, the internet personality Andrew Tate has launched a political party. He has done this seemingly in response to a resurgence of interest in the scandal of Britain’s predominantly Pakistani Muslim “grooming gangs”, as these …
MAGA’s divisions can’t be healed
Even before his return to the Oval Office, the coalition that allowed Trump to win the election is fracturing. It is still too early to tell just how serious the rift caused by the H-1B visa row really is. But …
The MAGA battle over foreign workers
Cognizant, a tech firm in New Jersey, routinely obtains over 5,000 H-1B work visas a year, which it uses to bring foreign workers over to manage IT and cyber security projects. It’s a business strategy that has turned the company …