(Tomdispatch.com) – In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Americans are finally — or is it once again? — confronting the racism that afflicts this country and extends into just about every corner of our national life. Something fundamental just might be happening. Yet to state the obvious, we’ve been here before. […]
From WW II Victory to Trump’s ‘America First’: Is our anti-Nazi Resolve Foundering?
( Tomdispatch.com ) – The 75th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s surrender in May 1945 ought to prompt thoughtful reflection. For Americans, V-E Day, as it was then commonly called, marked the beginning of “our times.” The Covid-19 pandemic may signal that our times are now coming to an end. Tom Engelhardt, editor and proprietor of […]
US Nat’l Security State Tilted at War on Terror Windmills when Real Threats — Climate and Pandemic — were at Home
( Tomdispatch.com) – Americans are facing “A Spring Unlike Any Before.” So warned a front-page headline in the March 13th New York Times. That headline, however hyperbolic, was all too apt. The coming of spring has always promised relief from the discomforts of winter. Yet, far too often, it also brings its own calamities and […]
The Age of Trump and Pseudo America: Phonying Up our Key Institutions
( Tomdispatch.com) – The impeachment of the president of the United States! Surely such a mega-historic event would reverberate for weeks or months, leaving in its wake no end of consequences, large and small. Wouldn’t it? Shouldn’t it? Truth to tell, the word historic does get tossed around rather loosely these days. Just about anything […]
The Miseries of being a Hyper-Power: How America Squandered its Cold War Victory
(Tomdispatch.com – Thirty years ago this month, President George H.W. Bush appeared before a joint session of Congress to deliver his first State of the Union Address, the first post-Cold War observance of this annual ritual. Just weeks before, the Berlin Wall had fallen. That event, the president declared, “marks the beginning of a new […]
Too Inept to end the fruitless US Forever Wars: Trump v. the National Security State
(Tomdispatch.com) – Let us stipulate at the outset that Donald Trump is a vulgar and dishonest fraud without a principled bone in his corpulent frame. Yet history is nothing if not a tale overflowing with irony. Despite his massive shortcomings, President Trump appears intent on recalibrating America’s role in the world. Initiating a long-overdue process […]
High Crimes and Misdemeanors of the Fading American Century
(Tomdispatch.com ) – There is blood in the water and frenzied sharks are closing in for the kill. Or so they think. From the time of Donald Trump’s election, American elites have hungered for this moment. At long last, they have the 45th president of the United States cornered. In typically ham-handed fashion, Trump has […]
Reflections on “Peace” in Afghanistan; Leaving a Misguided War and Choosing Not to Look Back
( Tomdispatch.com) – When the conflict that the Vietnamese refer to as the American War ended in April 1975, I was a U.S. Army captain attending a course at Fort Knox, Kentucky. In those days, the student body at any of our Army’s myriad schools typically included officers from the Army of the Republic of […]
From Concentration Camps to Environmental Collapse: How America became a Dystopian Nightmare
( Tomdispatch.com ) – [Editorial note: This remnant of a manuscript, discovered in a vault near the coastal town of Walpole, Massachusetts, appears to have been part of a larger project, probablyenvisioned as an interpretive history of the United States since the year 2000. Only a single chapter, probably written near the midpoint of the […]
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