Tomgram: John Feffer, Navigating the New “Normal” in 2029

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

I grew up on sci-fi and dystopian fiction. Brave New World, 1984, Darkness at Noon, Fahrenheit 451, and A Canticle for Leibowitz were all reading for me in my high school and college years. And yet, in truth, nothing prepared me for Donald Trump. He’s already left all of that ancient reading of mine in the dustbin of history. Who read more

Tomgram: Aviva Chomsky, Who Has Freedom of Movement and Who Controls It?

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

Recently, reading an article in the Guardian by Ariel Dorfman on the deportation of children from this country, I thought about the three children, actual U.S. citizens, who were recently deported to Honduras with their mothers — one a four-year-old with Stage 4 cancer but without his or her medications.

Dorfman is a novelist — as an editor at Pantheon Books long, long ago, read more

The Warning That Was Charlottesville

I recommend reading Charlottesville: An American Story by Deborah Baker. It’s an account, of course, not of all aspects of the city of Charlottesville, but principally of the Nazi-KKK-White Supremacist riot of 2017 that has taken on the name “Charlottesville” — including in a movie. The book itself is the furthest thing from predictable. The majority of it is pre-riot, with countless illuminating tangents and background read more

Tomgram: Norman Solomon, Nuclear Winter or Climate-Change Summer, What a Choice!

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

One thing you can count on: when it comes to world-ending possibilities on this planet of ours, nothing ever seems to get better. Consider it amazing that we humans, in our strange and remarkable version of ingenuity, have come up with not one but two ways to essentially wipe out everything that might matter to us on this planet (ourselves included). The first, atomic weaponry, read more

Tomgram: Frida Berrigan, The Same Technology Powers DoorDash and Weaponized Drones

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

Let me tell you about a little experience I had recently. To understand it, though, you have to know that this 80-year-old walks six miles a day without fail. That’s essentially three miles in the morning before breakfast and three later in the afternoon. And how can I tell that I’ve walked that far? You already know the answer to that, I’m sure: the pedometer on my cell read more

Tomgram: Liz Theoharis, Aaron Scott, and Moses Hernandez McGavin, The Christian Nationalist Mission to Banish Trans People

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

At some level, it couldn’t be less complicated. Donald Trump is a classic bully. Which means, if you aren’t on his side of things (as he sees it), watch out! And count on one thing, anything involving DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) isn’t on his side of things. We know that now, of course. How could we not? He couldn’t have been clearer on the subject this time read more

Law, Not Crime, Has Come From South of the Border

Not so much criminals as the foundations of the rule of law — that is what has infiltrated the United States from Latin America. That seems to be a major thread running through Greg Grandin’s wonderful new history of the hemisphere, America, América: A New History of the New World. It’s a book you can dive back into repeatedly, not to mention fantasize about someone compacting it into a short slideshow for the benefit of the President of the United States.

British settler colonists in North read more