Author: Tom Engelhardt

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And here’s a little story from the Neolithic age we now call “the Sixties” about that moment when the U.S. military was still a citizen’s army with a draft (even if plenty of people figured out how to get exemptions). At a large demonstration, I turned in my draft card to protest the war. Not long after, my draft board summoned me. I knew when I got there that I had read more

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He was horrified and angry — and who wouldn’t be? A recent Fox News — Fox News!!! — poll showed that, if the 2020 election were held tomorrow, any Democratic candidate worth mentioning would beat Donald Trump read more

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I know Rudy Giuliani more intimately than many Americans. I watched him for years on the local morning and nightly news, saw his rise from tough-talking United States attorney to failed mayoral read more

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Pardon Me?
Donald Trump is the Fakest (and Realest) News of All
By Tom Engelhardt

Here’s the truth of it: I’d like a presidential pardon. Really, I would. And I think I deserve it more than Michael Milken or Rod read more

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Who doesn’t remember, as a child, making that Christmas wish list for Santa and his elves? As it happens, in this century — and in the post-Christmas season, no less — a Pentagon already sporting the highest budget ever is still making such wish lists, officially known as “unfunded requirements lists,” for the orange-haired Santa in the White House and especially read more

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You should know that things are already not going well in your country when a majority of the Electoral College, if not of Americans, elects a con man as president, a “businessman” whose greatest success was landing on his feet, money in hand, after his five casinos went up in flames. read more

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Here’s a word that essentially dropped out of Washington’s dictionary in this century: peace. It used to be part of the rhetoric, at least, of politicians there, but in the era of the war on terror it’s barely made an appearance. In election year 2020, however, it’s back, not as a global phenomenon or as a general term, but very specifically connected to the more than read more

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With our news world crashing down around us thanks to Attorney General William Barr’s actions and the president’s bizarre tweets and post-impeachment purges of “deep state” figures, not to speak of the read more

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In early 2017, U.S. Army Major Danny Sjursen, who first stumbled upon TomDispatch while on duty in Afghanistan in 2011, wrote to the site wondering if he might do a piece for it. He got in touch, in part, because a former Army colonel, Andrew Bacevich, whom he admired, was already regularly read more

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

He was the candidate who, in a 2016 election campaign debate, swore that, as president, he’d “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.” At another read more