Author: Tom Engelhardt

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Once upon a time, the American government was into scientific problem-solving in a big way. I’m thinking of the World War II years when that government invested upwards of $2 billion (no small sum then) to gather together the greatest available read more

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Just how extreme is this country? Not quite as bad as many of us feared, it seems. Still, it’s certainly extreme enough, despite the host of election deniers who lost read more

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As retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and historian William Astore wrote recently at his Bracing Views blog, while the Republicans didn’t experience their expected “red tide” on read more

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Admittedly, it’s dangerous to quote yourself. Still, I wrote this line in June of election season 2016, a moment when only one politician in America, sporting an acronymic MAGA he had read more

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Someday, Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine may be rated as the stupidest act in human history. In case you hadn’t noticed (and if so, where the hell have you been living?), our planet’s in genuine crisis. Flooding, read more

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I felt it then. I feel far more certain of it now. My dad, who died in 1983, was a member of what came to be known as the Greatest Generation, those who served in World War II. In fact, he volunteered the day after Pearl Harbor (though he was then old enough that he might not have been drafted) and ended up in the U.S. Army Air Corps — there was no separate Air Force in those read more

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In her piece today, TomDispatch regular Frida Berrigan brings up a past I remember all too well. Indeed, I can still recall my teacher putting a radio on her desk when I was a schoolboy in the 1950s so we could hear what must have been read more

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Alice wouldn’t recognize America’s real-life tea party, which could hardly get madder (or so I say now). Instead of the Queen of Hearts — you know, the character in Alice in Wonderland who ordered read more

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An Obituary for Our World And I’m Not Kidding! By Tom Engelhardt

Oddly enough, I’ve read obituaries with fascination from the time I was quite young. And yet, in all these years, I’ve never really reflected on that fact. I don’t know whether it was out of some indirect fascination with death and the end of it all or curiosity about the wholeness (or half-ness or brokenness) of an individual life in full. But here’s the odd thing: read more

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Yep, in a world in which inflation and oil read more