It must be all-so familiar to Theresa May. There she was in 2017, holding hands with The Donald, walking in the White House as the first foreign leader invited to see the new Caesar after his inauguration. Poised to assume …
The danger of copying China
We live in an era in which globalisation and the geopolitical environment have arguably made a certain level of coordination between private corporations and nation-states — i.e. “public-private partnership” — a necessity for achieving the interests of both parties.
Nothing …
The rise of the slacker aristocracy
One is an amateur filmmaker and stay-at-home-dad whose wife is an executive at a financial services firm. Another founded two technology companies and is taking some time out after selling each for millions of dollars. The third supports himself with …
The tyranny of Columbine
The 25 years since the Columbine massacre have given us many occasions — other massacres, alas — to invoke it. But this repetition has had the strange effect of dimming and narrowing our sense of what “Columbine” was in its …
Why RFK Jr is the Silicon Valley candidate
When Robert F. Kennedy Jr revealed that his running mate for the presidency was Nicole Shanahan, ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergei Brin, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the usual suspects. Although Shanahan is successful in her …
How RFK could smash the two-party system
The surrender of Nikki Haley — long drawn-out but long expected — has set both of America’s major parties on the same course: a limp coronation, conducted through process of elimination. Donald Trump’s path is clear, competitors fallen away, while …
The university monopoly must be broken
America has forgotten the point of educationA few months after the fact, the removal of Claudine Gay from the Harvard presidency increasingly looks like a watershed moment. Shortly after Gay’s ousting, the New York Times published a long piece titled …
John Podesta: the Democrat dictator of reason
After John Kerry stepped down from his role as Biden’s climate envoy, another Democratic stalwart was bound to take his place. Enter John Podesta, a consummate Washington insider and veteran of the last three Democratic presidencies. Already an overseer of …
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 …
California’s aristocracy of lunatics
The standard TV image of a district attorney — or, prosecuting attorney — in the US is of a tough government lawyer passionate about putting bad guys behind bars. Or maybe the “DA” is a cynical, striving politician willing to …
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, …
Covid Mortality Patterns in the USA
After three and a half years of unbridled and myopic media coverage of a single disease, coupled with unprecedented availability of data on that disease, it is appropriate to ask if any world-wide patterns of interest have surfaced concerning Covid …
The death of the think-tanker
Daniel Ellsberg, perhaps the most famous think-tanker of all time, passed away in June this year. But rather than any policy paper or legislative advocacy, he is remembered for an action then treated as treachery and now regarded as heroism. …
Peter Navarro: the tragic prophet of Trumpism
When Peter Navarro stood in front of a Washington DC courthouse to speak to the press after a trial convicted him of contempt of Congress last week, he was repeatedly heckled by a woman with a sign yelling “Traitor!” He …
An Arctic war is coming
In a land of extremes, nowhere in the Arctic does the temperature oscillate more wildly than the tiny settlement of Fort Yukon in north-eastern Alaska. This village — of a few hundred residents belonging to the indigenous Gwich’in community, and …