Background
Writing for Substack is something of an experiment. I have been writing on current affairs since I was a young teenager in College. Some of it was off-line, including for a College newspaper, an alternative conservative outlet that was setup across Maine campuses, and then during internships at think tanks. More recently, I have written AMAC, the Association of Mature Americans, under the pen name Daniel Roman, with a number of my articles featured on RealClearPolitics.
As those articles indicate, if it was not obvious, I am right of center. But I feel I am an iconoclastic right of center. In a time where political polarization not just in the United States, but across the world is increasingly following lines of education, I am an American who spent nearly a decade abroad at British schools, including an extended stint teaching at one of the most boarding institutions. When social groups are determined by politics, I have very different social and work groups. When so much of discourse on politics happens in the here and now, and history is used as a tool, I am someone who loves the topic. I loved it enough to earn a Phd.
That eccentricity comes with costs. When I was offered a speechwriting position at the National Security Council in 2019, my writings and politics confused the appointees charged with vetting. Reportedly, the voter targeting software suggested I was a “hardcore” Communist.
I am not. But I believe that understanding what will happen in the world requires understanding what has happened. And that means understanding why it did.
What I hope to do with this site is provide a deeper dive into geopolitical issues, as well as the forces changing the world. Some of that will involve a newsletter focused on international elections and changes of government. For that, I feel it is important to dig deeper and look at why things happened and what they mean. After all, anyone can read the Economist. I also want to look at how those issues intersect with American developments.
In particular, I feel there is a lack of understanding across the lines between “Trumpworld” where many of those who will run a future Republican Administration live, discuss, and consider developments, and the wider media sphere. This has only become worse since the rise of social media censorship.
I therefore want to provide a perspective to both groups I interact with to try and bridge that gap.