( Tomdispatch.com) – Honestly, doesn’t it befuddle you? I mean, don’t you think we humans are kinda mad? And worse yet, at some deep level, we simply can’t seem to stop. All too often, we just can’t curb our urge to destroy. Looking back, the desire to make war and obliterate our “enemies” is a […]
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
( Tomdispatch.com) – Let one old man deal with two others. I turn 80 in July, which makes me just over a year-and-a-half younger than Joe Biden and almost two years older than Donald Trump. And, honestly, I know my limits. Yes, I still walk — no small thing — six miles a day. And […]
A Slow-Motion World War III? Imperial decline in the Age of Climate Change
( Tomdispatch.com ) – I’ve been describing this world of ours, such as it is, for almost 23 years at TomDispatch. I’ve written my way through three-and-a-half presidencies — god save us, it could be four in November! I’ve viewed from a grave (and I mean that word!) distance America’s endlessly disastrous wars of this […]
Living on the Wrong World: A Planetary Cease Fire is Desperately Needed
( Tomdispatch.com ) – On this planet of ours, it almost doesn’t matter who’s right and who’s wrong when it comes to our wars. Actually, let me correct that thought slightly: it certainly does matter, but what matters so much more is that we humans simply can’t stop fighting them. That is (or at least […]
A Trumpian Bacchanalia in 2024?
( Tomdispatch.com ) – I was born on July 20, 1944, almost two years after Joe Biden arrived on this planet and almost a year before You Know Who, like me, landed in New York City. The United States was then nearing the end of the second global war of that century and things were […]
Double Threat: Nukes and Climate Change in 2024
( Tomdispatch.com ) — Honestly, what strange creatures we are. Nothing stops us when it comes to destruction, does it? (And I’m not even thinking about the utter, ongoing devastation of Gaza.) I mean, give us credit as the new year begins. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about humanity isn’t our literature, our theater, our […]
A Slow-Motion Gaza: Or how to Carbonize the Planet Earth
( Tomdispatch.com) – Imagine this: humanity in its time on Earth has already come up with two distinct ways of destroying this planet and everything on it. The first is, of course, nuclear weapons, which once again surfaced in the ongoing nightmare in the Middle East. (An Israeli minister recently threatened to nuke Gaza.) The […]
How our Petty Wars are Distracting us from the Existential Challenge of Climate Change
( Tomdispatch.com) – Let’s admit it: We are indeed mad creatures. This should truly have been the time of our discontent. The northern hemisphere just experienced the hottest summer in recorded history, including month by month the warmest June, July, August, and (by a country mile) September ever. Staggering heat records were set in place […]
New Cold War, Ever-Hotter Planet: What could Possibly Go Wrong?
( Tomdispatch.com) – Tell me, what planet are we actually on? All these decades later, are we really involved in a “second” or “new” Cold War? It’s certainly true that, as late as the 1980s, the superpowers (or so they then liked to think of themselves), the United States and the Soviet Union, were still […]
© 2025 All Rights Reserved