Author: Tom Engelhardt

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

There was certainly a hint that the previous century was not going to unfold in a particularly propitious manner when World War I, “the war to end all wars” (a phrase famously attributed to American President Woodrow Wilson), proved but an introduction to a second world war that would make the first look more like a skirmish. Add in the fact that the pandemic to end all read more

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In this century, the war-fighting performance of the U.S. military has proven woeful indeed and both the Pentagon high command and key Trump administration officials have evidently been incapable of drawing obvious conclusions from that fact. Or think of it another way: even the president who can’t read more

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Murder, He Said
The Killer-in-Chief
By Tom Engelhardt

“Be assured of one thing: whichever candidate you choose at the polls in November, you aren’t just electing a president of the United States; you are also electing an assassin-in-chief.” So I wrote back in June 2012, with a presidential election approaching.

I was referring then to the war on terror’s CIA and military read more

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In case you hadn’t noticed — and it would have been hard to miss — for the first time in history the price of oil recently fell below zero. At one point, in fact, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark for U.S. crude oil, hit -$37.63. read more

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It was the wars I noticed first and, in those years, made the heart of TomDispatch’s coverage. You know, the ones that went under the label of “the war on terror,” that never were won and only seemed to expand exponentially across the Greater Middle East and Africa. Those were the conflicts that somehow lacked progress, no matter how often Americans “thanked” read more

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My dad came from Brooklyn, which meant I was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan from the start. One year, I even lost whatever I had saved up from my microscopic allowance betting on World Series games with Gus, who worked behind the soda fountain at the local drugstore. When he refused to take my money, my father made me pay anyway. (“A man,” he told me sternly, “always pays his read more

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So here’s a basic dose of President Trump: On April 14th, he met with a group of Covid-19 survivors in the cabinet room of the White House and, citing the “Spanish Flu” pandemic of 1918 in which, he claimed, 75 million to 100 million people died globally, he offered this bit of typical (and typically only semi-coherent) self-congratulation:

“But not since then have we read more

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He hosted 14 seasons of The Apprentice and its successor, The Celebrity Apprentice, and in all those years I probably spent seven minutes watching the show, or flipping past it as I looked for something else — and, as far as I was concerned, that was seven minutes too many. I don’t want you to think that I didn’t watch my share of junk on TV. I did. read more

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At maybe age 13, I can remember reading H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds, his Martian invasion classic in which aliens tear up London, under the covers by flashlight while I was supposed to be asleep — and I’ve read science fiction ever since. Ditto dystopian fiction from the time I stumbled read more

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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