Author: Tom Engelhardt

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The Ultimate Caricature Donald Trump, My Parents, and the Potential Last Act (and What an Act!) of Human History By Tom Engelhardt

Sometimes I dream — in the sense of a nightmare — about bringing my parents back to this all too strange world of ours to tell them about… yes, of course, Donald J. Trump. They died long before The Apprentice even made it onto TV early in this century, so — best guess — though they also lived in New York, they undoubtedly had never heard of him.

My mother read more

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Sometimes it does seem as if the past were indeed the present or even the future. I’m thinking most recently of photos of the destruction of Gaza. When you look at them, you read more

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When it comes to history, consider Donald Trump, the second time around, the distraction president. As a start, out of the blue he suddenly released a vast swath of documents, tens of thousands of pages, about President John F. Kennedy that, while they taught us little or nothing new about his assassination, did tell us something about how deeply and widely the Central Intelligence read more

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Hey, it’s a veritable bargain for Donald Trump! How could the businessman president (six of whose firms read more

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I was barely a year old when two atom bombs were used to destroy the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Just before my birth, my father, then a U.S. Air Force major, had returned from fighting the Japanese in Burma. I never asked him what he felt when he heard the news of the devastation of those two cities and the war-ending moment that followed. Now, of course, I’ll read more

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Sometimes, strange as it might seem, striking historical moments pass almost unnoticed. As far as I’m concerned, that couldn’t be truer recently. Under the administration of President Donald Trump (who snags every headline in sight for just about anything he says or does), an extraordinary moment did indeed pass essentially unnoticed. Yes, there were a few news reports read more

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Honestly, it’s hard even to imagine: a small 25-mile strip of land filled with more than two million Palestinians, which, since Hamas’s grim October 2023 assault on southern read more

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Bankruptcy Is Us The Personification of Decline By Tom Engelhardt

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Honestly, don’t expect this to end well. As TomDispatch regular Alfred McCoy, author of the classic book on an imperial planet To read more

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Honestly, I just never imagined it would actually hit a trillion — yes, a trillion! — dollars. I’m thinking, of course, about what’s still called the “defense” budget. It’s now read more