North Idaho has long been home to those seeking to escape the looming collapse of America. This is a region doused in frontier spirit; a land where people openly carry guns, and where bounty hunters still operate, tracking down fugitives …
A cartel will decide the US election
Everyone knows the United States is in steep decline — except perhaps for its political leadership. The US Congress went without a speaker for the greater part of last month, seized for the umpteenth time by anti-statists. In the Senate, …
Republican hawks now want a war with Iran
Over the past decade, Republican hawks have looked on in horror as their party drifted away from the interventionist foreign policy of the Cold War years and the War on Terror. Last Friday, in a conference hall tucked inside the …
How magical combat can win the next election
At a certain point in the life cycle of every civilisation, intellectuals become entranced with the idea that there must be a rational order underlying the blooming, buzzing confusion of the universe. At this stage, most people hail the triumph …
How American liberals can win
For years now, American conservatives have been engulfed by an intellectual civil war, with various shades of the “New Right” fighting to overthrow “Conservatism Inc.”. What is less well-understood, however, are the changes taking place on the centre-left: the broad …
Vivek Ramaswamy and the rise of Indian America
Crammed together on a crowded stage during the first Republican debate of 2023, two figures stood out: 38-year-old Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy, a biotech millionaire with a Harvard pedigree, and 51-year-old Nimrata Haley (née Randhawa), an accountant, former governor of South …
What really causes Trump Anxiety Disorder?
Donald Trump stops me sleeping, and I am not alone. The multiply indicted former president’s fans sneeringly call it “Trump Derangement Syndrome”. Psychologists, who since 2016 have seen a rise in people anxious about the state of the world, call …
The Donald Trump Monster Movie
In Hollywood sci-fi movies from the Fifties, there is often a moment when the US military drops an atomic bomb on a monster. It then invariably emerges from the radioactive cloud unscathed — to the disappointment and horror of those …
The California militia ready for civil war
Redding, the capital of Shasta County in the far north of California, spreads out in thin strips of suburbia, its freeways reaching up into mountainous upcountry. Here, 19th-century gold-mining settlements crouch in the valleys among snow-ridged glaciers and lines of …
Will the elites ever behave?
Why do even the mightiest societies collapse? In his new book End Times, complexity scientist Peter Turchin blames both “elite overproduction” and a malign “wealth pump” that funnels spoils to the super rich. His theory of societal apocalypse is rooted …
The political dynasty America needs
In an era when social media dictates political decision-making and open contests are vulnerable to capture by fervent ideologues, the call for “boring politics” might seem like a non-starter. Yet to write it off is to write off history. Some …
Is Ron DeSantis the next Ted Cruz?
Just a few months ago, Ron DeSantis held the Republican presidential nomination in his hands. The governor won re-election in Florida by a landslide in November and polling showed a nation-wide double-digit lead over Donald Trump. Since then, a jury …
The GOP is fighting the wrong culture war
The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade’s guarantee of a right to abortion, marked the triumph of a decades-long conservative legal crusade. Close to a year later, however, and Dobbs has …
Post-Trumpism could save America
Just as Elizabeth I would have been disheartened to learn that she had lived during the Age of Shakespeare, I am sure that no living US president, from Jimmy Carter to Joe Biden, wants to be a footnote to Donald …
The trouble with arresting Trump
On 22 January 1905, the Orthodox priest Georgy Gapon led a large procession of hungry and dissatisfied workers towards St. Petersburg’s Winter Palace, an event that would culminate in the tragedy known as Bloody Sunday, as imperial soldiers opened fire …
