Author: Tom Engelhardt

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

In her new piece, TomDispatch regular Kelly Denton-Borhaug discusses the eerie psychology of America’s elected representatives as they continue, using ever more staggering numbers of taxpayer read more

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

My Life with Maus Or How I Was Banned (Even If in a Second-Hand Way) by a Trumpian World By Tom Engelhardt

Sometimes life has a way of making you realize things about yourself. Recently, I discovered that an urge of mine, almost four decades old, had been the very opposite of that of a rural Tennessee school board this January. In another life, I played a role in what could be thought of as the unbanning of the graphic novel Maus.

For months, I’ve been reading about the growing read more

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

Thought about a certain way, most of my adult life has been spent at war. No, I’ve never been to war myself, although I was swept away by the antiwar movement of the Vietnam era. My country, on the other hand, has been more or less eternally at war. In fact, TomDispatch read more

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

Honestly, it’s been hell on earth for grown-ups. Thanks largely to Donald Trump and crew, we’re in the country with by far the read more

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

<Pardon me?

No, no, I don’t actually need a pardon. I wasn’t ransacking read more

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

Progress? Let’s see. We’ve gone from unending wars in distant lands against enemies capable of little more than wielding firearms and roadside bombs — and those conflicts were disasters — to the possibility of a war in the European heartland between nuclear-armed foes. I mean, honestly, what could possibly go wrong?

And it was all fated to happen in Europe because of read more

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

Think of the U.S. military-industrial-congressional complex as a remarkably self-contained system. It’s capable of funding itself at staggering levels, producing weaponry (however inefficient, read more

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

Whatever the U.S. military may be considered, it isn’t usually thought of as a scam operation. Maybe it’s time to change that way of thinking, though. After all, we’re talking about a crew with a larger “defense” budget than read more

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

America’s Two Pandemics And How They Mixed and Matched By Tom Engelhardt

Imagine that you were experiencing all of this (and by this, I mean our lives right now) as if it were a novel, à la Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year.  The famed author read more

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

Sometimes the unconscious mind tells us just what we truly want to say about our world. That happened to Senator Mitch McConnell only the other day. He was speaking to reporters after fellow Senate Republicans (with the read more