America

Say what you like about Donald Trump’s former adviser, Steve Bannon, but his ‘flooding the zone’ thing really works, doesn’t it? Bannon’s thesis about political communication – which is, really, a thesis about political communication as political warfare – is that you need to pump out such a torrent of outrageous and chaotic actions and pronouncements that the press and your opponents are overloaded, flummoxed, thrown into confusion. Nobody can see the big picture. Nobody can focus on anything for any length of time because there’ll immediately be something else still more bizarre or disconcerting to digest. America isn’t just a place. It’s an idea. An idea to do with freedom I say this only because, a few days ago,

A video has been doing the rounds in which a woman holds an iguana up to the glass window of an aquarium. A beluga whale emerges from the murk. For a brief moment two creatures whose very existence is incomprehensible to each other – who would never, in millions of years, have met but for this precise set of circumstances – come nose to nose. The whale then turns, and is gone. Something similar occurred on stage at the HowTheLightGetsIn festival on Sunday, where Alastair Campbell interviewed Curtis Yarvin – a ‘neo-reactionary’ blogger, tech entrepreneur and court theorist to J.D. Vance. He has argued for a form of monarchy in

Donald Trump’s apparent suggestion that people could protect themselves against Covid by injecting themselves with bleach marked a low point in his first administration. It provided his critics with evidence that he was an erratic president trying to ride roughshod over scientific evidence as well as common sense. It is easy, therefore, to dismiss the American President’s announcement that government health warnings will henceforth be printed on packets of Tylenol – a brand name for paracetamol – telling pregnant women to avoid the painkiller for fear it will cause autism in their unborn children as yet another anti-scientific diatribe. The involvement of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr – a

Political Islam is a powerful global force. Wahhabism, the Muslim Brotherhood and Shia theocracy are different yet successful strands of the same impulse to govern according to the will of Allah. Political Christianity, by contrast, has in recent decades, even centuries, taken a back seat when it comes to public affairs. With some exceptions, Christians have broadly interpreted Jesus’s message to ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’ as an injunction not to muddy the holy pursuit of justice with the worldly pursuit of power.  At Charlie Kirk’s memorial yesterday, the world witnessed something different: not just a Christian politics but a political Christianity. Republican party campaigns have long had

It’s a singular privilege to be the first American president welcomed here. And if you think about it, it’s a lot of presidents, and this was the second state visit – and that’s a first and maybe that’s going to be the last time. I hope it is actually. But this is truly one of the highest honours of my life. Such respect for you and such respect for your country. For many decades, His Majesty the King has epitomised the fortitude, nobility, and the spirit of the British monarchy and the British people. He’s dedicated himself to preserving the glory and unique character of this kingdom, restoring life to

The Donald is in Britain. As a holidaymaker used to budget flights, I associate Stansted airport, where Trump landed last night, with precisely the amount of glamour it currently offers, but I also know it was where planes in distress are directed to on their return – its long runway giving them the best chance of survival. Stansted is where imperilled dreams go in the hope of rescue. As Trump arrived, I realised its tarmac had not done for me what it once did for others. For them, that blessedly long runway was salvation. For me, it’s where my resistance crashed and burned. As I peered at the pictures of

It all began with such promise. Donald Trump would sweep away all the failures of past administrations, sit astride the globe like a Nobel Prize winner in the making and solve the world’s seemingly unresolvable security challenges. To be fair, it has only been eight months since he began his second term in the White House. But it is a fact that Trump has struggled to bring the force of his personality and chutzpah to bear in trying to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as he pledged he would in short shrift during his presidential campaign. His return to the White House was supposed to be the start

The pipelines would be sealed off. The supertankers would be left in the ports, and the wells would have to be capped. When Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, it was confidently assumed that sanctions on Moscow’s oil and gas industry would be so punishing for its fragile economy that it would quickly force Vladimir Putin to plead for a settlement. Unfortunately, it has not worked out like that. Instead, the sanctions against Russia have been widely flouted. In response, President Trump has demaned that Nato makes them stick. But would sanctions really work and cripple Putin’s war machine?  President Trump was in typically robust form. Over the weekend, he