The battlelines on immigration have hardened predictably. Left-leaning voters proudly display “refugees welcome” yard signs, while Donald Trump supporters cheer his pledge to implement “largest deportation operation in the history of our country”. Amid such partisan attitudes, it has become …
Elon Musk just wants to go to space
In 414 BC, Aristophanes’ The Birds was first performed in Athens. In this comedy, two disgruntled middle-aged men, fed up with life on Earth, convince a giant bird to create a great city in the sky. Free from the cruel …
Will New York abandon the Democrats?
If the Trumpian message of decay and decline has any resonance, it’s in places like Hunts Point. Emerging from the subway here in the South Bronx, I see a man on a payphone pleading to speak with a psychotherapist. Another …
What happened to America First?
“No more wars, I’m going to stop wars” vowed Donald Trump in his first post-election speech to voters. And his campaign was marked by his critique of neocon-led military engagements in the Middle East, though with little detail as to …
America’s new caste system
I’ve been teaching Tocqueville’s Democracy in America for a very long time. But only recently have I come to appreciate some of his deepest assumptions and their implications about the whole democratic experiment. In particular I’ve been thinking about the …
Covid masked liberal weakness
Donald Trump is back in the White House — and among Democrats, the blame game has already begun. Nancy Pelosi, for instance, has claimed that Joe Biden should have held off supporting Kamala Harris, instead encouraging an open primary. Harris …
Why didn’t Jews vote for Trump?
On 28 June 1969, patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, fought back against the police harassing them. This was the signal event in the formation of the modern Gay Rights Movement. More than half a …
Democrats need a new Clinton
A shattered Democratic incumbent. A rambunctious Republican outsider. An election marred by economic turmoil and the usual destabilising violence in the Middle East. A campaign of contrasts, of relentlessly negative liberals, dismissing their rival as extremist, and conservatives pushing forward …
Robert Kennedy Jr: America needs a revolution
This article was first published in May 2023.
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 …
What revolutionary France can teach Elon Musk
A nation in turmoil. An economy in flux. A professional class paddling in profligacy, and a public increasingly disgusted by the out-of-touch elite in the centre. The answer? A brilliant outsider, a financial wizard and a foreigner, who can whip …
Project 2025 is the new normal
Last Wednesday night, I was regaled by a young black American Uber driver all the way from Dulles airport to the Capitol, with a note-perfect reel of Trumpian talking-points. He didn’t like Trump personally, he told me — but understood …
Can RFK Jr rebuild the American body?
Donald Trump has long sought to portray himself as some sort of aristocrat, and now, a deeply divided American electorate has given him the chance for the greatest grift of all. King Trump’s Camelot is within his grasp, and the …
Welcome back to 1945
Were he magically granted the power of time travel, would it be a moral obligation for David Lammy to kill the baby Trump in his cradle? He did after all describe America’s President-elect as “a racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser” …
Barron Trump: America’s edgelord
One wonders what goes on at the house parties of New York University. Home to the edgelord arts schools Tisch and Steinhardt, NYU has become flypaper for undeodorised alternative types, scooting in from loft communes with chickpea-tastic packed lunches to …
Can Donald Trump’s tariffs fix America?
While Donald Trump told Americans they were right to feel angry about their economic woes, the Democrats told them they were wrong to feel that way. The election result shows which message voters appreciated most.
A road trip across the …