Author: Tom Engelhardt

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

History Is More or Less Bunk
The Light at the End of the Tunnel?
By Tom Engelhardt

Let me quote a Trumpian figure from long ago, Henry Ford. That’s right, the bigot who created the Ford Motor Company (and once even ran for president). Back in 1916, in an interview with a Chicago Tribune reporter, he offered this bit of wisdom on the subject of history:

“Say, what do I read more

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Everything worries us in these desperate coronaviral days of ours. If, however, one thing should have set off alarms everywhere (and didn’t), it was the moment in mid-March when, having dismissed the Covid-19 virus as the Democrats’ “new hoax” or the equivalent of read more

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

I’m sure you still remember them. The president regularly called them “my generals.” They were, he claimed, from “central casting” and there were three of them: retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, who was first read more

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Think of Donald Trump as a revolutionary when it comes to the alphabet. How many presidents have spent so much time on the basic ABCs the way he has? After all, since the moment he arrived at the White House, he’s been laser-focused on eliminating four letters in any association whatsoever from that alphabet. You know which four they are — A-B-O-M — which, curiously read more

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You know how, every now and then, something just crystalizes everything for you? Here’s an example from my own life. In November 2017, I read a piece at the Guardian website headlined “Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett are read more

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In case you hadn’t noticed, the exploding coronavirus pandemic (we’re #1!) has taken a tad of our attention lately and the definition of “the future” has largely become: When will this be over?

Not surprisingly, then, much real news about our future planet has largely gone missing in action. Take, for example, a story that’s received next to no attention in this read more

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Let me state the obvious: Right now, we could hardly be in a more unsettled moment on a more unsettled planet. And I feel it personally. This old man has deserted New York, the city where I was born almost 76 years ago, the streets where I grew up, the place I returned to in 1976 and have lived in ever since. I’ve left what’s now being called the “epicenter” read more

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I often imagine somehow summoning my mother and father (who died in 1977 and 1983) back to this planet of ours. I’m curious to know what they would make of the almost unimaginable world we now live in — not that they didn’t live through their own threatening, topsy-turvy global moments. Both were only in their twenties when the Great Depression hit. Unfortunately, read more

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As most of you know, I’m an old guy who still reads the paper New York Times (though who knows how long it will continue to be delivered under present coronaviral circumstances). When I picked up last Friday’s issue — and this is increasingly typical — there wasn’t a piece read more

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

A Planet of Missing Beauties
In Memoriam
By Tom Engelhardt

The other morning, walking at the edge of a local park, I caught sight of a beautiful red cardinal, the first bird I ever saw some 63 years ago.

Actually, to make that sentence accurate, I should probably have put either “first” or “ever saw” in quotation marks. After all, I was already 12 years old and, even read more