Author: Tom Engelhardt

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

I was born into another world, a year before the end of the Second World War. And in that world, my mother was something of a rarity. I only realized that when, at school, I discovered that most of my classmates’ mothers were, as the term then went, “housewives” (which in many read more

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In case you hadn’t noticed, we’ve been held for ransom by one man — or that’s the way it so often seemed in the media at least. I suspect you know just who I mean. If you can’t guess right off the bat, let me give you a hint or two. He’s a multimillionaire read more

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Heat, heat, heat. It’s a world of firsts, of records that no one could ever have wished for. From my own childhood, I remember the A.A. Milne poem that began:

“They’re changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace —
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
A soldier’s life is terribly hard,
Says Alice.”

That was written read more

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In case you hadn’t been paying attention, it’s hot on this planet. I mean, really hot. And I’m not just thinking about Europe’s worst heat wave in at least read more

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We’ve barely begun to experience the fallout from the Supreme Court’s disastrous Dobbs v. Jackson abortion decision. Only a few state-level abortion “trigger laws” like read more

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I doubt you’ll be shocked to discover that, in the years of the (first?) Trump era and the now read more

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If anything saved my life when I was young, it was books. Library books, to be exact. These days, about to turn 78, I walk past one of my bookshelves, notice the several volumes of history I’ve collected on the Ottoman Empire — I was always curious about it! — and think sadly, I’m never going to get to you, am I? But when I was young, there was only one issue: making read more

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In my home in the early 1950s, we lived Life to the fullest (with the Saturday Evening Post and Look thrown in for good measure). In fact, from those largely print media years — we got our first black-and-white TV in 1953 — I can still remember a Life cover photo showing the pained face of an American soldier caught up in the Korean War. read more

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How far are we? Who really knows? Let’s just say that we’re somewhere significantly down the road to extremity, all-American style. With a hung (and wrung-out) Congress and a lame (and aged) president, our tripartite government is looking ever less “tri” and ever more “part.” And it increasingly read more

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Yes, Afghanistan went down the drain and Washington’s global war on terror ended (more or less) in disaster 20 years after it began. But the urge to militarize the planet? Not a chance in an American read more