by Matthew Friedman | Jan 7, 2022 | Commentary, Politics
On 2 January 2016, a band of armed anti-government extremists occupied the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon. Ammon Bundy, the Stetson-wearing leader of a right-wing militia with the anodyne name Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, had been addressing an...
by Matthew Friedman | Nov 22, 2021 | Commentary, Politics
There’s a scene about halfway through the 1972 film musical Cabaret that never fails to give me chills. The film’s hero Brian Roberts (Michael York) and his lover Max von Heune (Helmut Griem) are enjoying a glass of lager at a biergarten in the German countryside in...
by Matthew Friedman | Nov 17, 2021 | Commentary, Politics
Writing in the Washington Post this week, Olivier Knox left no doubt that the left wing of the Democratic Party will be held responsible for the party’s loss of Congress in the 2022 midterm election and even – whispered in sotto voce – the return of the Great Satan...
by Matthew Friedman | Oct 3, 2021 | Commentary, Politics
A white man wearing a Stars and Stripes bandana threw a Molotov cocktail into the Travis County Democratic Party headquarters in Austin, TX on Wednesday, and then casually walked away. The bomb did not ignite, and damage was minor. You might not have heard about the...
by Matthew Friedman | Sep 30, 2021 | Commentary
I am not wearing an orange shirt today, like some kind of grinning Canadian politician, hoping that a photo-op will wash away my country’s sins. Today is the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation in Canada, a new statutory holiday meant to honor “lost...
by Matthew Friedman | Sep 19, 2021 | Commentary, Politics
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Met Gala dress blew-up the Internet last week. For a brief moment, the social- and conventional-media commentariat on the right and the left were able to agree on a matter of critical political import: The congresswoman’s Aurora...