( Tomdispatch.com ) – Yes, “shock and awe” is back in the second age of Donald Trump. His border czar, Tom Homan, used that very phrase to describe border policy from day one of the new administration and, whether the president has actually said it or not, it’s now regularly in headlines, op-eds, and so […]
D is for Decline, Dystopia and . . . Donald
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Count on one thing: in some almost unimaginable future, no American president (if we even have them anymore) is going to rename a mountain for Donald Trump as he’s recently tried to do with North America’s tallest peak. He wants Alaska’s Mount Denali (to hell with Native American names!) to be […]
An Act of National Suicide
( Tomdispatch.com ) – And that’s something we humans seem to have a genuine knack for these days. If you don’t believe me, just consider those record-setting burned-out areas around Los Angeles. Admittedly, that was Nature (with a capital N), but given a grim helping hand by You Know Who. You can thank big oil, big coal, and […]
The New Year from Hell: The Return of Trump
( Tomdispatch.com) – Honestly, as 2025 begins, isn’t it finally time to reimagine American history? So, what do you think of this: George Trump, Abraham Trump, Ulysses S. Trump, Franklin D. Trump, Dwight D. Trump, John F. Trump, Lyndon B. Trump, and even Richard M. and George W. Trump. And yes, of course, on January […]
Bankrupting the Planet: The Trump Tempest
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Give him credit. As a start, for that first surprise victory in 2016. No, I didn’t fully get it at the time, but I kind of get it now (since, like the rest of us, I’ve lived through it all, including his close loss in 2020). Still, twice? Him? A convicted […]
Creating a Genuine Hell on Earth
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Honestly, what would George Orwell have written about this planet of ours, four decades after that ominous year 1984 passed from his fiction into history? And yes, in case you think that, as in his novel 1984, published in 1949, a year before his death and just as the Cold War […]
The Empire is Going Down
( Tomdispatch.com ) – He’s the man of the hour (and you can choose your hour), win, lose, or draw. I mean, who can deny it? Certainly not the crowd at his debate with Kamala Harris that, as he reminded us recently, absolutely “went crazy” over what he had to say. (And it couldn’t matter […]
Voting for the End of the World: How Trump would (Literally) sink the Planet
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Imagine yourself in space, looking down on our world and yet unable to return any time soon. Consider it our bad luck, in fact, that Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams were the two Americans sent to the International Space Station, 250 miles above this planet, for a few days in […]
Trumptopia and Beyond: Is Reality the Biggest Fiction of All Today?
( Tomdispatch.com ) Yes, long ago, I dreamt of being a novelist. Two ancient manuscripts packed away in a distant corner of my closet attest to that (ir)reality, as does one novel focused on the world of publishing (in which I’d been an editor) that made it into print, even if it was barely noticed. […]
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