Author: Tom Engelhardt

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Ripley’s Believe It or Not has nothing on our moment and it hardly matters where you start! Take, for instance, our last president’s read more

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

I still remember my parents singing the World War I-era song:

“You’re in the Army now,
You’re not behind a plough,
You’ll never get rich,
You son of a bitch,
You’re in the Army now.”

My father volunteered for what was then the Army Air Corps right after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. As is still true, it wasn’t seen as a particularly lucrative or upwardly read more

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The Decline and Fall of Everything (Including Me)
What Goes Up Must… Well, You Know…

By Tom Engelhardt

I find nothing strange in Joe Biden, at 79 (going on 80), being the oldest president in our history and possibly read more

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

As gun sales in this country soar — another 43 million weapons bought in 2020 and 2021 alone — while the possession of military-style weaponry is read more

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I was born into another world, a year before the end of the Second World War. And in that world, my mother was something of a rarity. I only realized that when, at school, I discovered that most of my classmates’ mothers were, as the term then went, “housewives” (which in many read more

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In case you hadn’t noticed, we’ve been held for ransom by one man — or that’s the way it so often seemed in the media at least. I suspect you know just who I mean. If you can’t guess right off the bat, let me give you a hint or two. He’s a multimillionaire read more

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Heat, heat, heat. It’s a world of firsts, of records that no one could ever have wished for. From my own childhood, I remember the A.A. Milne poem that began:

“They’re changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace —
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
A soldier’s life is terribly hard,
Says Alice.”

That was written read more

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In case you hadn’t been paying attention, it’s hot on this planet. I mean, really hot. And I’m not just thinking about Europe’s worst heat wave in at least read more

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We’ve barely begun to experience the fallout from the Supreme Court’s disastrous Dobbs v. Jackson abortion decision. Only a few state-level abortion “trigger laws” like read more

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I doubt you’ll be shocked to discover that, in the years of the (first?) Trump era and the now read more