Author: Tom Engelhardt

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

The figures stagger the imagination. The latest Pentagon budget will come in at about $850 billion (while the full national security budget will undoubtedly once again be in the read more

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

Yep, you’ve read this before, haven’t you? Once again, heat records were set over Labor Day weekend from California to Colorado as the West, in a historic megadrought, continues to burn, with fierce fires bursting out and some areas experiencing temperatures 20 degrees above the norm for this season. Yawn…

And ho-hum as well: With Covid officially more or less over, read more

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

Yes, we live in an ever more frightening country. During the pandemic years, Americans went wild buying guns, nearly 20 million of them yearly read more

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

Try to take this in for a moment. Only recently, as ProPublica reported, a Chicago electronics mogul gave the largest political donation in American history, $1.6 billion. (Yes, you read that right!) read more

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

Living in a Sci-fi World How the American Dream Became the American Scream By Tom Engelhardt

Honestly, if you had described this America to me more than half a century ago, I would have laughed in your face.

Donald Trump becoming president? You must be kidding!

If you want a bizarre image, just imagine him in the company of Abraham Lincoln. I mean, really, what’s happened to us?

Not, of course, that we haven’t had bizarre politicians in Washington before.  I read more

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

He’s never been either an apprentice or a man to miss the main chance. The latest example: only recently in mourning (or do I mean morning?) for his first wife, Ivana, he buried her on the golf course he owns in Bedminster, New Jersey. As the New York Post read more

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

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

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