Author: Tom Engelhardt

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Today, in the context of the Black Lives Matter protests, TomDispatch regular Andrew Bacevich considers the all-American version of “extreme materialism” that Martin Luther King called out more than half a century ago. And when it comes to the overwhelming read more

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Yes, the Senate gave him its nod of approval, 98-0, including Alaska Republican Senator Dan Sullivan, who had previously placed a hold on his nomination. (“The right man at the right time” was the way he now put it.) And so General Charles Q. Brown became the read more

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The Age of Disappointment?
Or How the American Century Ends
By Tom Engelhardt

Let me rant for a moment. I don’t do it often, maybe ever. I’m not Donald Trump. Though I’m only two years older than him, I don’t even know how to tweet and that tells you everything you really need to know about Tom Engelhardt in a world clearly passing me by. Still, after years in which read more

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There was only one time in my life when I might actually have been jealous of Donald Trump. That’s when — as TomDispatch jock culture correspondent Robert Lipsyte, author of read more

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I’m almost 76 years old, in Covid-19 isolation, and — though I’ve been to many demonstrations in my life — haven’t been to one since George Floyd was murdered. I haven’t even been near one and that will, I suspect, be one of the regrets of my life. Thank goodness Nick Turse, TomDispatch’s managing read more

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In the grimmest sense imaginable, this has already been an action-packed year.

Try, in fact, to imagine a summary of this moment in historical terms: Right now, in June 2020, we’re experiencing a version of the 1918 “Spanish flu” pandemic; an instant rerun of the Great read more

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In the Oval Office (or the White House underground bunker) is a president who does just what he wants. Not long ago, for instance, his administration sent read more

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Here’s a little portrait of the United States in June 2020, a passage from a New York Times report on the National Guard’s treatment of a recent protest march of people chanting “We can’t breathe!” in Washington, D.C.:

“A Black Hawk helicopter, followed by a smaller medical evacuation helicopter, dropped to rooftop level with its searchlights aimed at the crowd. read more

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Is there an American problem that hasn’t been made far worse by the spread of Covid-19 and a “leadership” in Washington that couldn’t lead itself out of anywhere whatsoever? Any places that were previously crowded, underfunded, and undertended — prisons, read more

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Okay, here’s an exact quote from my youth, a bit of homespun wisdom from another generation, and believe me, at almost 76, the number of more than half-century-old sentences I can quote from memory is small (to vanishing): “It’s the whale that spouts that gets caught.” My read more