Jon Gabriel

The internet is obsessed with pills—not the pharmaceutical variety, but the ideological kind. “The Matrix” created the metaphor when Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) offered two pills to Keanu Reeves’ character. Take the red pill and see dark reality as…

The 2024 presidential sequel is creating a malaise among voters and officeholders. Can it be overcome? Sequels rarely succeed like the original. And if the original stunk, audiences avoid the follow-up like a bad rash. That’s where America finds…

Introducing a new column by Jon Gabriel: Learning lessons from the past yields big benefits for our future Hi, I’m Jon. I’ve written a handful of pieces for Discourse over the past few months and was grateful when asked to contribute a monthly…

GOP primary voters aren’t buying what the Florida governor is selling Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign for the presidency has imploded, at least according to the conventional wisdom. His launch was called a “debacle,” and he soon “lost the internet.” The…

Americans’ ongoing distrust of elites bodes poorly for the next public health crisis The 2008 financial crisis was a political earthquake, though a subterranean one. Hitting weeks before Election Day, its full effect didn’t manifest quickly enough to…

Members of the educated class are beginning to realize what the rest of us have known for some time: Americans have good reasons not to trust them By Jon Gabriel The British comedy show “That Mitchell and Webb Look” has a viral sketch showing two…

Polls show that who the GOP nominee is will matter a great deal to 2024’s battleground states Six months into primary season, the race for a Republican presidential nominee hasn’t changed a whole lot. A baker’s dozen of new candidates have entered…