Author: Tom Engelhardt

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Let me do something I seldom do and briefly predict the future in an up-close-and-personal fashion. Count on this: on November 4th, Zohran Mamdani will indeed be elected mayor of New York City. (I’ll vote for him and I have no doubt that I’ll be anything but alone.) And count on this, too: as his opponent, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, read more

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We never seem to learn, do we? Certainly not when it comes to air power. After all, as Dave de Camp has reported at Antiwar.com, the Trump read more

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Hey, he even has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame! And believe it or not, he has won a Nobel Prize, something he so desired! Oh, wait, my mistake. What Donald Trump actually won was an “ read more

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I’m sure you’ve never heard of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services. But just so you know, though it was established almost three-quarters of a century ago, only recently Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth read more

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Once upon a time, perhaps a century ago — actually, it was probably 1959 — bored by my high school American history class, I began fiddling with a sheet of paper I had hidden inside my history textbook on which I had traced a global map. I soon found myself drawing the Chinese conquest of the world (and, of course, of my own country). At the time, as I read more

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The Surrender President Creating a Distinctly Declinist Power on a Distinctly Declinist Planet By Tom Engelhardt

Ours would be the normal story of imperial powers rising and falling on Planet Earth — nothing new there, of course — if it weren’t for one thing: the fact that this world, too, is now falling. Unfortunately, nothing is truly normal about this planet of ours anymore, as the slow-motion read more

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Yes, all these centuries later, this planet is at war — at least, three utterly disastrous ones — in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. And it seems that isn’t faintly enough for our president who, at this point, is distinctly stirring up the waters of the Caribbean.

And if the history of this country since the name of the Department of War was changed to… no, not read more

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Let’s face it: we’re now in a different country. You know, the one where, if you happen to live in a city with a Democratic mayor (as I do), then watch out. Sooner or later, you’re likely to see not just ICE agents but armed National Guard troops on the streets. Memphis happens to be the latest target of Donald Trump’s militarized wrath. (No matter that the city has read more

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When I was a kid, I replayed the Civil War on the floor of my room with toy soldiers. (All these years later, I still have a tiny Ulysses S. Grant on a horse beside my desk.) As a teenager, I read historian Bruce Catton’s famed read more

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The other day, while walking the streets of New York City with some groceries in my backpack, I got drenched. The skies suddenly opened and it poured. All too literally. I finally managed to dash under one of the typical building construction platforms in our neighborhood and found shelter with quite a crew of fellow drenchies. I then stood there and watched the water all too read more