The most politically prescient movie when it comes to the networks infiltrating our government these last forty years must be Power, director Sidney Lumet’s 1986 vehicle for exploring America’s mechanisms of political control, his informal sequel to the much more famous Network. The main characters in Power are portrayed by Richard Gere, as a political campaign consultant, and Denzel Washington, as his client: a lobbyist representing Gulf State sheiks who want to induce America’s government to sponsor coups in Latin American countries. The sheiks’ first step in this direction is using Gere...

With the retirement next month of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) in the face of vociferous attacks from President Donald Trump, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) is the only member of any of the three branches of our government who consistently and on principle opposes American empire—and who also opposes the taxes, debt, and interventions that come with it. In a little over a year, he may not be. For the first time in his seven-term congressional career, Massie is being challenged by a formidable primary opponent. That opponent is Ed Gallrein, a former Navy Seal who during his thirty years of...

On the Wednesday of the last week of July, a former Florida State University employee approached a man wearing an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) shirt on campus and began berating him for his support of a state she believed was committing genocide. By the next day, she was arrested, on the basis of the person wearing the IDF t-shirt alleging (with video support) that she gave him “maybe just a push” on the shoulder and also alleging (without any support) that she “definitely just hate-crimed” him. The attorney general of the United States, Pam Bondi, who directs the Department of Justice, had...

Empires, unlike revolutions, don’t have heralds; they work off quiet aggrandizements of power, not bold declarations of freedom. But America’s imperial class appears to have a member who’s missed that memo: the Zionist hedge fund manager William Ackman, a self-selected Patrick Henry of an elite that cannot want one. For the last few years, as his allies have quietly worked to curtail popular politics, Ackman has become a reliable articulator at any given moment of just what game they are actually playing. In 2023 and 2024, as his allies subtly tried to float alternatives to conservative...