The right criticises OWS because it lacks order ... or surreptitiously injects hierarchy; because it respects private property ... or doesn't ... What drives the rhetorical sniping against OWS is the need for scapegoats. The media that offers them up is playing a dangerous game
The Occupy movement in the United States is both similar to and different from its Tea Party predecessor. The precise combination gives it political space to grow, says Cas Mudde.
The United States's capacity to build alliances and extend influence was once founded on confidence that history was on its side. No longer, says Godfrey Hodgson.
A flawed response to terrorism on its soil brought the United States low. The lessons are also for the rest of the world to learn, says Rein Müllerson.
A terror-filled day of mass murder in the eastern United States imprinted itself on the world's consciousness - and became the prelude to a decade of further violence. openDemocracy writers reflect on the impact and legacy of the events of 11 September 2001.
A half-decade after 9/11, the United States appeared to Andrew Stroehlein to be locked in a “conflict mentality”. Now, he says, a new set of economic concerns - and even the rise of carnivalesque politics - signal the return of a kind of normality.
The downgrade of America's Sovereign debt rating is a recognition that the Gingrichite revolutionaries might win their struggle. The only response left must be to persuade voters of an ambitious, worthwhile common project above the levels of the family, locality and church
The legalisation of same sex marriage in New York and Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas’s announcement that he is an undocumented immigrant raise questions of the nature and limits of the American ‘melting pot’. Who is a ‘meltable American?’
Barack Obama’s hopes of a second term are still bright. But twin policy crises and Republican stirrings are clouds on his re-election horizon, says Godfrey Hodgson.
The state of the U.S. economy is still looming large over the opening presidential election race. It will likely remain the dominant issue, while foreign policy developments and the 2010 Supreme Court decision on campaign financing will play prominent roles, argues Frank Groome
The manoeuvring over the United States presidential election in 2012 is underway. But the nature of a contest defined by issues of ideology and economy rather than personality is also beginning to emerge, says Godfrey Hodgson.
The United States's prolonged counterinsurgency wars in Afghanistan and Iraq raise strong echoes of Vietnam. But new studies suggest that the lessons of this half-century military arc need to be carefully drawn, says Mariano Aguirre.
