Plutocracy or Democracy?

Despite much lofty rhetoric portraying the United States as a democracy (in which the people rule), this nation, in fact, has often resembled a plutocracy (in which the wealthy rule).

The confusion owes a great deal to the fact that the United States, at its founding, was somewhat more democratic than its contemporaries.  In the eighteenth century, European nations, governed by kings, princes, and other wealthy hereditary elites, usually provided a contrast to the more unruly, less hidebound new read more

Unthinking, Apathy, and Genocide

Late last century I figured out that I needed to work on a job dedicated to making the world a better place. I know not everyone can find such a job if they try. I appreciate all the other useful jobs that millions of people do — if not the useless and destructive ones that millions of other people do. But I do want people to use some of their spare time to help out with the cratering world. In every moment of the past quarter century there have been people diligently creating catastrophes — read more

Tomgram: Liz Theoharis and Noam Sandweiss-Back, Trump’s War on the Poor in a New Gilded Age

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

Hey, in case you didn’t know it, there’s no such thing as homelessness in America. And I have a distinctive authority to cite on the subject: Elon Musk. Yes, Elon, the man (except, of course, for The Man, aka Donald J. Trump). I mean, who should know better than Elon, the richest man on planet Earth (even though his Tesla brand is now read more

Vietnam, Truth, and Reconciliation 50 Years Later

Approaching 50 years since the end of the American War, as the Vietnamese call it, and something over 70 years since the start of it, depending when you start the clock, truth and reconciliation remain incomplete. I don’t mean for the people of Vietnam, who seem, from what little I know, in general to have a better grasp of both truth and reconciliation than the U.S. government or corporate media. I also don’t mean truth and reconciliation between governments, which really don’t traffic read more

Tomgram: Engelhardt, Trumpworld, The Second Time Around (and Around and Around)

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President Bankrupt And a Country (and World) Coming Apart at the Seams By

From childhood, I think I had some eerie sense of just how bad it could get in America. After all, in junior high and high school, I was riveted by this country’s Civil War. Among all my toy soldiers — cowboys and Indians, British marching troops in red jackets, and plastic Army-green World War II soldiers (from my father’s war) — and those read more

Fukushima World

Thomas A. Bass’s new book, Return to Fukushima, makes an overwhelming case for the absolute idiocy of pursuing nuclear energy, reveals the disaster at Fukushima to be worse than you’ve probably heard, and disturbingly establishes the likelihood that many of us will eventually be living in Fukushimas if humanity doesn’t get rid of the nukes.

The case against nuclear energy that is made here can be roughly divided into six points.

One, “What today are called civilian reactors began — like read more