Journalists have now spent nearly a decade haunting the farms and taverns of rural America, trying to understand why millions of decent heartlanders voted for Trump. It’s a romantic story, casting the underdogs against elites, and explaining how America’s forgotten …
Only the Republicans can stop Jew hatred
Given some basic wisdom, directing for the stage is rather simple. The wisdom is that: “The audience don’t care.” They don’t care where the characters “went to school”, or what memory the actor is dredging up to influence his performance; …
A murder in Pennsylvania’s swing county
It was just before 2.30am, on a crisp Tuesday morning, when Tyrell Holmes was set on fire. Few were awake to hear his shrieks. By the time the police arrived, Holmes had collapsed dead, his corpse smouldering next to a …
The godless US election
Rallies. Insults. Slightly awkward baby-holding. In most ways, this year’s election is just as crass and theatrical as ever. Yet as the American public heads to the polls, the 2024 cycle is strikingly different for one key reason: its godlessness. …
American industry must rise again
Austerity is rarely popular during election season, and already this campaign has featured a variety of budget-straining proposals. Donald Trump has called for exempting tips from taxation, which Kamala Harris subsequently endorsed. J.D. Vance has suggested increasing the child tax …
Is Trump right to fear election fraud?
When I visited Mar-a-Lago in spring 2021 to see Donald Trump, his aides asked me not to raise the matter of the 2020 election. They wanted him forward looking and optimistic, not grousing about a past defeat. I didn’t raise …
America’s destiny lies in the New South
Every morning, just as the sun rises, Charleston Harbor hosts a scene of stirring patriotism. There, in the courtyard of Fort Sumter, tourists raise a huge American flag, helped along by a National Park Service ranger. And why not? This, …
Mark Zuckerberg wants to be Caesar
Among Silicon Valley’s moguls, the spotlight has been hogged by Elon Musk. His ever more enthusiastic appearances at Donald Trump rallies and his vocal support for Right-wing causes on his platform X come as the Valley trades in its Democrat-aligned …
Will Sin City decide America’s fate?
Just days before the election, America’s destiny rests on that Valhalla of oddsmakers, Las Vegas. “If we win Nevada, we’re going to win the whole thing,” vowed Trump, and for once he was not exaggerating. Nevada not only holds the …
America’s future isn’t fascist
“Weird” does not begin to describe the American atmosphere at this moment. The media and internet seethe with talk of civil war; but everyone is going about their daily business. The weather is uncanny: temperatures in the Northeast, where I …
Bruce Springsteen is the last American liberal
Memories of 11 September, and the dark days that followed, are universal among geriatric American millennials. As a member of the generation that came of age in the Nineties and early 2000s, I can easily return to those early hours …
Why women love Ryan Murphy’s Monsters
Crass, titillating and (at best) casual with the truth, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story takes an instance of real-life cruelty and violence and twists it into oversexed entertainment. It implies an incestuous connection between the two brothers whose …
How the Mob went mainstream
As far back as he can remember, Michael Franzese always wanted to be a gangster. Just head online if you don’t believe me. There, across dozens of videos and thousands of views, the former caporegime in the Colombo crime family …
Donald Trump’s strange sincerity
The faster American culture spreads, the less foreigners seem to understand it. In October, the Irish novelist Anne Enright shared a few thoughts about the US elections. “[T]hese politics are playing out in some secret part of the American psyche,” …
When Trump fed the press a nothingburger
In his 1991 song “New Jack Hustler”, Ice T tells a tale that was already a gangsta rap cliche when the song was released — a narrator’s first-person story of his career as a successful seller of drugs, a busy …