Author: Tom Engelhardt

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

Here’s the curious thing: since at least the Vietnam War era of the 1960s and early 1970s, the United States has been almost continuously at war. Certain of those conflicts like the Vietnam War itself and those in Iraq and Afghanistan in this century are still remembered by many of us. Honestly, though, who remembers read more

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

Burning Books (or Rather Book Companies) Looking Back on My Years in — And out of — Publishing By Tom Engelhardt

No one listened better than Studs.  For those of you old enough to remember, that’s Studs Terkel, of course. The most notable thing about him in person, though, was this: the greatest interviewer of his moment, perhaps of any moment, never stopped talking, except, of course, when he was listening to produce one of his memorable bestselling oral histories — he essentially read more

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

In so many ways, you still wouldn’t know it — not, that is, if you focused on the Pentagon budget or the economic growth paradigm read more

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

I hate to admit it, but I almost burst out laughing over the way a number of Republicans — and not just Marjorie Taylor Greene — read more

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

At the dawn of America’s forever wars, President George W. Bush and his speechwriter David Frum teamed up to create a meaningless, hyperbolic phrase that lumped together Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, setting the stage for two decades of foreign policy fallout.

“States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world,” read more

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

In today’s piece, TomDispatch regular Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, explores the Biden administration’s read more

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