War Is A Crime

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Beyond Our Control
America in the Mid-Seventies and 2020
By Tom Engelhardt

It was summer almost half a century ago when I got into that Volkswagen van and began my trip across country with Peter, a photographer friend. I was officially doing so as a reporter for a small San Francisco news service, having been sent out to tap the mood of the nation in a politically fraught read more

Yale Magrass and Charles Derber’s latest book is called Glorious Causes: The Irrationality of Capitalism, War, and Politics. I hope people are reading it. I worry, because after Mom, apple pie, and shopping, what are more popular than capitalism, war, and politics? Probably not . . . oh, I don’t know . . . analyses of the similarities between the histories of Nazi Germany and the United States. Those are in this book too, and are probably the most interesting parts of it.

In the book’s defense, read more

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

Consider two numbers that tell you a good deal about where the United States is as October ends.

The first is 510,000. The coronavirus is now spiking, particularly across the Midwest and rural West, as Americans start heading indoors for winter amid a chaotic refusal to wear masks read more

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

At this point in the presidential campaign, who doesn’t know that Donald Trump essentially winked at the plot of 13 men, including two ex-Marines, to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer? read more

A Brief History of Fascist Lies is the title of a new book by Federico Finchelstein, the author of a number of books on fascism and populism. Finchelstein both draws distinctions that slot politicians into categories (such as fascist or populist) and points out the overlaps and the shades of gray, the forerunners and the enablers.

Not only have there been politicians who resembled Trump in other countries in recent decades, but the appearance of Trump — I think — depended on the regimes read more

I read this nightmare fantasy in the Financial Times:

“Of course, a second term for Mr Trump would have a wholly different impact on US-German relations than would a Joe Biden presidency. It is conceivable that a victorious Mr Trump would push hard to end US wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East, and take American troops out of Europe. He might even hope to make an ally of Russia against China. It would almost certainly be the end of Nato.”

Of course, virtually anything is “conceivable,” read more

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

Okay, I admit it, I’ve been worried — and no surprise there. In this world from hell, it’s not hard to worry about untold numbers of things going wrong. Let me, however, lay out my own large-scale version of worry about this America of ours. What if Joe Biden does win? The world — at least the world I know and read and watch and talk to — has one giant read more

This week on Talk Nation Radio, as we begin year number 20 of the U.S. war on Afghanistan that Obama pretended to end, Trump promised to end, and it seems every U.S. presidential candidate from here on out (including Trump again) will promise to end, we look at how exactly destroying Afghanistan got started over 40 years ago. Our guests are Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, whose article at World Beyond War dot org is called “President read more