The rich have always flaunted their wealth. It was rarely good enough to enjoy financial success, you had to be conspicuous about it. They build enormous homes for everyone to gawk at. They throw lavish parties. They commission paintings, statues, biographies. They endow institutions so that their...
In this age of social media and artificial intelligence (AI), the dominant model for modern systems of government has now become hyperreal democracy. If current trends continue, society itself will inevitably become lost in a world of commercially driven illusion. Even if many brave souls are...
Are we freighting football with too much responsibility? After all, the game we recognize today started as a frivolous competition for English factory workers to let off steam at the end of a miserable, emotionally unrewarding and ungratifying work week in the 19th century. Yet this futile ball...
Gulf Arab states are in a pickle. They fear that the emerging parameters of a reconfigured US commitment to security in the Middle East threaten to upend a pillar of regional security and leave them with no good alternatives. The shaky pillar is the Gulf monarchies’ reliance on a powerful...
"If we don't learn from the tragedies of the past, we are cursed to repeat them in the future," proclaims the home page of the website of the Himachal Pradesh State Disaster Management Authority. To ensure that the irony is not lost on either the creator or the visitor of the website, just...
The economization of every aspect of life in today’s consumer society has had a particularly pernicious influence on public education. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, society saddled education with the task of infusing respectable knowledge in young people’s heads. Politicians...
The global health crisis has led to an increase in going out cashless due to fears of transmission of the coronavirus. Yet this has had an adverse impact on social and economic inclusion. It has also exacerbated the so-called “digital divide” over who has access to the internet and can buy...
For over 50 years, I have been writing about foreign policy — mostly America’s but those of other nations as well. I think I have a pretty good grasp of places like Turkey, China, India, Russia and the European Union. I regret that I am less than sure-footed in Africa and Latin...
Earlier this month, the US, UK and Australia announced an unprecedented agreement to provide nuclear-powered submarines to the Australian Navy. The move provoked outrage from France, which had been negotiating the sale of conventionally-powered submarines to the Australians. French ire led to...
In recent months, I have had the privilege of helping curate an exhibition, “This Fascist Life: Radical Right Movements in Interwar Europe,” which is running from October 2021 to February 2022 at the Wiener Holocaust Library in London. Just as the Science Museum’s new show, “Our Future...
