It can be a little bit embarrassing admitting that you are a Country music fan when you’re a middle-class journalist living in London. It carries a certain stigma: “Isn’t that just music for rednecks?” someone asked me recently, somewhat baffled. …
Hillary Clinton still doesn’t get it
Let’s indulge in some nostalgia for a moment. It’s Nineties America and “political apathy” is the complaint on every politician’s lips. The end of the Soviet Union is a recent memory and Western democracy has emerged triumphant, though the average …
Tucker Carlson’s accidental confession
At the end of the Nineties, I called Tucker Carlson to ask his advice. I was about 20. He spoke kindly to me, and I liked him.
He had started his Washington career working for the Right-leaning Weekly Standard magazine. …
Washington DC is a failed city
If you had to pick the exact day when the young, affluent, and oblivious of Washington DC were forced to accept that they live in a failed city, 22 July 2021 would be as good a choice as any. That …
Will America share Rome’s fate?
The similar destinies of the United States and Rome can at times seem eerie. The three Punic Wars fought between the middle of the third century BC and the middle of the second century BC, constituted the great world wars …
The end of dollar supremacy
In January 1999, in a Washington of bustling bars and soaring stock markets, Bill Clinton rose to deliver his State of the Union address. America was so untroubled by threat or misfortune that it had spent the previous year debating …
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 …
The false logic of slavery reparations
Has a route to reparations finally been revealed? Last week, Cori Bush, the Democratic Congressman from Missouri, along with a group of other progressive lawmakers, unveiled the “Reparations NOW” resolution, which hopes to pay out $14 trillion to black Americans. …
Robert Kennedy Jr: America needs a revolution
For decades, as a scion of the Kennedy family and environmental litigator, Robert F. Kennedy Junior was considered an establishment hero. In recent years, however, his rhetoric against Covid lockdowns and vaccines — culminating in him making a comparison with …
Adderall is not an identity
It’s 2am here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I’ve just finished writing 7,500 words of corporate marketing copy. I then turn my attention to this piece. But my attention is glitching. So I do something I haven’t done since I took …
Elbridge Colby: China is more dangerous than Russia
Since writing Donald Trump’s National Defense Strategy in 2018, Elbridge Colby has become one of the most influential conservative defence thinkers in America. If a Republican wins the presidency in 2024 — whether Trump or DeSantis — he is likely …
The myth of America’s imperial decline
With a New World Order lurking on the horizon, will America play nothing more than a supporting role? That is certainly the impression given by recent reports in the US and beyond. While the Ukraine crisis has helped to renew …
The corruption of California
I backed into a spot where I could watch both entrances of the Papa Johns Pizza parking lot, punctual for my rendezvous. To be safe, I had first taken a slow cruise through the lot, on the lookout for the …
Is George Santos a Machiavellian prince?
After the latest batch of revelations about his hidden history and penchant for patent falsehoods, Americans are struggling to make sense of New York Representative George Santos. Even before he was able to take office in January, several newspapers began …
Mexico’s cartel corruption on trial
It is no big secret that Mexican police officers moonlight for drug traffickers. As far back as 2010, a state commander nicknamed “El Tyson” admitted in a confession video on national television that he was not only a high-ranking cartel …