- — Once Upon a Time (and Not Any Time Either!)
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at 6/4/26 7:44amOkay, heres what this old man remembers nearly a quarter of a century later. I was living in New York City (as I still am) when, on September 11, 2001, two hijacked planes full of passengers hit the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, killing almost 3,000 innocent people. Until that moment, of course, such a thing would have been beyond inconceivable, no less watchable on TV, in the United States of America. Had someone written up such a plot with Osama bin Laden and crew in the cast of characters, it would have been treated as the worst kind of unpublishable science fiction. But, of course, it did indeed happen and, in some strange sense, in its wake... Read more Source: Once Upon a Time (and Not Any Time Either!) appeared first on TomDispatch.com.- — After America
- at 6/2/26 7:28amWhile Washington’s war with Iran drags on, month after month, without any end in sight, the world is witnessing the very real limits of U.S. global power. As President Donald Trump lurches repeatedly from threats of devastation to promises of peace, its becoming increasingly clear that U.S. military might is no longer capable of subduing even a mid-sized power like Iran, much less holding the rest of the world in its thrall. Amid all the drama of air raids, drone strikes, and naval blockades, there are deeper geopolitical forces at play that lend a lasting historical import to events in the Persian Gulf dynamics best seen by comparing two newspaper editorials with revealing similarities despite the 80 years separating... Read more Source: After America appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
- — About That Arc of the Moral Universe
- at 5/31/26 3:32pmThis is my last article for TomDispatch. For over a decade, Tom Engelhardt has given me a platform to write about pretty much anything that grabs my I’ll admit it, easily attracted attention. It’s been a wonderful partnership for me, offering not just a place to publish, but a chance to think, talk, and often argue with the best editor I’ve ever worked with. A rarity in the age of Internet insta-publishing, TomDispatch subjects every article to the scrutiny of three separate proofreaders. Not for Tom the misplaced apostrophe or the confusion between “their” and “they’re.” Unlike the New York Times in a May 12, 2026 headline, no article appearing in TomDispatch would ever go rogue and ask... Read more Source: About That Arc of the Moral Universe appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
- — Donald (Disaster) Trump
- at 5/28/26 7:27amDonald Trumps America is a scary place in significant part thanks to an unholy alliance of MAGA devotees who don’t believe in science and see intellectuals as public enemy number one, and a gaggle of Silicon Valley militarists who think that theyre the smartest people in the room, if not the universe. Add in White Christian nationalists who abuse religious precepts to sow hatred and division and you have the foundations of the political base that elected Donald Trump (twice!). And worse yet, those groupings are likely to be with us long after our current president has gone off to that great cheeseburger stand in the sky. Still, its worth reflecting on whether such an odd coalition of allies can... Read more Source: Donald (Disaster) Trump appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
- — A Short History of Sportswriting (from Bat Masterson to Shams Charania)
- at 5/26/26 7:23amWhen Chinese leaders claim that the American empire is in decline, I immediately assume their analysts are decoding dispatches from ESPN, The Athletic, and columnist Shams Charania. After all, it’s in sportswriting, I’ve come to think, that the songs of the canary in the all-American coal mine couldnt be clearer. If the games we play and watch reflect our past and present lives, then the coverage and commentary about them may help predict our future. American sportswriters have been cheerleaders for empire since the early twentieth century, when Bat Masterson decided that shooting people in Dodge City wasnt fulfilling enough for a man of his talent and ambition. Yes, that Bat Masterson. He came East and, as a boxing columnist... Read more Source: A Short History of Sportswriting (from Bat Masterson to Shams Charania) appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
- — Pete Hegseth’s Desperate Crusade for Masculine Validation
- at 5/24/26 4:35pmEarlier this year, President Donald Trump surveyed his top military brass on the prospect of making war in Iran. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine urged caution, presciently predicting that a ramped-up campaign against Iran could lead its leaders to close the Strait of Hormuz. However, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s self-styled “Secretary of War,” jumped at the prospect of such a conflict. “Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up,” Trump recently recalled at a press event. “And you said, ‘Let’s do it, because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.’” Americans join the military for any number of reasons: to serve their country, gain economic stability, or simply join a community. For... Read more Source: Pete Hegseth’s Desperate Crusade for Masculine Validation appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
- — World War Trump
- at 5/21/26 7:38am“Its got no anything,” President Donald Trump said of Somalia in a recent xenophobic rant. All they do is run around shooting each other.” As is true of so much with this administration, every accusation is also a confession. U.S. troops have been shooting Somalis since the early 1990s, after lame duck President George H. W. Bush launched an ostensibly humanitarian intervention there that would be embraced by his successor, Bill Clinton. By June 1993, U.S. and U.N. troops had begun attacking various targets in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, linked to warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, who had helped overthrow dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. The next month, in a major escalation, U.S. helicopter gunships attacked a house in that city where a... Read more Source: World War Trump appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
- — Is the U.S. Heading Toward a Hard Landing?
- at 5/19/26 7:34amEver since North Korea suffered through the death of its first leader in 1994, a loss magnified by an economic collapse and a devastating famine, outside observers have likened the country to an airplane experiencing a serious malfunction. The major question they posed: in the end, would North Korea experience a soft landing or a catastrophic crash? Perhaps a reformer would come along say, a North Korean version of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev who could right the airship of state and guide it toward the runway of reunification with South Korea. More direly, the North Korean regime could collapse all of a sudden, like the Communist governments in Eastern Europe in 1989. Those were relatively peaceful affairs, but... Read more Source: Is the U.S. Heading Toward a Hard Landing? appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
- — The President of Peace Makes War on the Planet
- at 5/17/26 3:30pmHey, I always suspected that Donald Trump and I, having both grown up in New York City in the 1950s and early 1960s, had something in common. Now, I know just what it is his boyhood love for the 1950s TV program Victory at Sea. (“Did you ever see ‘Victory at Sea?’ ” he asked reporters in January while talking about the new Trump class battleships he wants to build. “What a great thing that is to watch!”) I was similarly fascinated by that prime-time documentary series on World War II when I was a youngster, and I imagine that the two of us were watching it at the very same time in the very same city, both of... Read more Source: The President of Peace Makes War on the Planet appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
- — Butter (and Schools), Not Guns (and Warfare)
- at 5/14/26 5:51amGuns or butter. Butter or guns. Can we have both? If not, which should come first? Consider it one of those chicken-and-egg conundrums of modern society. “Guns” is the stand-in for a well-funded military and “butter” for all the human goods, comforts, and needs of a society. Economists, politicians, and generals have long considered the balance of guns and butter. Wage too many wars, produce too many arms, and there wont be enough money to keep a nation decently fed and comfortable. Produce too many consumer goods, meet everyone’s needs, and a nation might find itself ill-prepared and vulnerable in the face of a possible attack or even invasion. Everyone from Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels to British Prime Minister Margaret... Read more Source: Butter (and Schools), Not Guns (and Warfare) appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
- — The Electric Car Is the Only Winner in the Latest Iran War
- at 5/12/26 7:30amAfter British troops had beaten German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s tank forces at the Second Battle of El Alamein in Egypt on November 4, 1942, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.” The same might now be said about humanity’s struggle to defeat the dire threat of global climate change caused by our never-ending burning of fossil fuels. The illegal war of aggression on Iran, abruptly launched on February 28, 2026, by the governments of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump, has indeed provoked a global energy crisis of a unique kind. The Iranians, of... Read more Source: The Electric Car Is the Only Winner in the Latest Iran War appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
- — Now You See Them… Now You Don’t
- at 5/10/26 4:43pmIt’s been a tough couple of months for women officials in Washington or, more accurately, in Trumpland. In early March (Women’s History Month, by the way), in a Truth Social post, the president fired Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, the second woman ever to hold that title. Weeks later, also in a social media post, he fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, the third woman ever to serve as head of the Department of Justice. While in the first year of his first presidency, Trump 1.0 had fired numerous officials, this time around, Bondi and Noem, who ran the two largest law enforcement agencies in the country, were the first cabinet officials to be dismissed. Both no surprise... Read more Source: Now You See Them… Now You Don’t appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
- — A World of Violence
- at 5/7/26 7:41am[The following passages are excerpted from Eduardo Galeano’s book Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History (Nation Books).] The Shoe(January 15) In 1919 Rosa Luxemburg, the revolutionary, was murdered in Berlin. Her killers bludgeoned her with rifle blows and tossed her into the waters of a canal. Along the way, she lost a shoe. Some hand picked it up, that shoe dropped in the mud. Rosa longed for a world where justice would not be sacrificed in the name of freedom, nor freedom sacrificed in the name of justice. Every day, some hand picks up that banner. Dropped in the mud, like the shoe. The Celebration That Was Not(February 17) The peons on the farms of Argentina’s Patagonia... Read more Source: A World of Violence appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
- — Gangs and Climate Change, Born in the USA
- at 5/5/26 7:42amRecently, I had the opportunity to stand in a friend’s kitchen eating pupusas, the Salvadoran national food, while listening to an update on conditions in Central America from Cristosals Noah Bullock. Cristosal is a key Central American human rights organization engaged in legal advocacy, forensic investigation, and amplifying the voices of people who are experiencing and resisting repression in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Noah offered considerable detail on the conditions in those countries, but his basic message for us living so far away was simple: No matter how dark the road gets, we keep on walking. We know the sun will rise again. So, while most of the world (and the media) is all too reasonably focused... Read more Source: Gangs and Climate Change, Born in the USA appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
- — A World in Trumple Deep
- at 5/3/26 3:27pmUnlike every other TomDispatch piece, this one wont be broken up with section titles for a simple reason.Its all about Donald J. Trump and when it comes to him, in this strange world of ours, no one ever really gets a break. In that context, heres my advice to you: Dont get old. For years, I managed not to do so, but unfortunately thats all over now and Im increasingly an old man.In fact, Im not quite two years older than Donald J. Trump.I was born on July 20, 1944, while World War II was still ongoing, and he was born on June 14, 1946, in the peacetime that followed but would all too soon become the Cold War with... Read more Source: A World in Trumple Deep appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
- — The Never-ending Nightmare of the Border Wall
- at 4/30/26 7:35amA leading preoccupation of the first Trump administration has all but slipped from view. Except when ostensible conservatives speak out against it, the major media have scarcely breathed a word on the subject. But its still there, 30 feet tall, aspirationally 1,952 miles long, obliterating habitats, dividing families, and sucking down public funds faster than a carrier-based air squadron. The media’s lack of attention is understandable. All-too-real wars of choice and metaphorical wars against science, universities, and the environment have dominated our airtime and the headlines. The rise of a new medievalism in medicine and the abrogation of international trade and security agreements have also won attention. Add to all of that a federal paramilitary kidnapping people, even from what... Read more Source: The Never-ending Nightmare of the Border Wall appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
- — The Global War on Terror’s Journey Home
- at 4/28/26 7:29amAmerica’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been receiving lots of scrutiny right now from journalists and ordinary citizens like me and for good reason! Detaining people en route to their kids’ schools, in hospitals, or at work shouldnt be the first thing that comes to mind these days when I think of “freedom,” “civil rights,” or “America.” Nor should spending tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to rebuild warehouses so that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, can hold people without charges in subhuman conditions. What do you think? In all of this mayhem, it’s easy to overlook new human rights violations because there are so many each day. Violations of the rule of law... Read more Source: The Global War on Terror’s Journey Home appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
- — Reining in the Pentagon
- at 4/26/26 3:53pmRight at this moment, we are witnessing an unprecedented shift of resources from domestic investments in the United States to the military-industrial complex (aka the war machine).The only comparable period in our history was the buildup to World War II, when the United States confronted a powerful adversary in Nazi Germany with designs to control not just Europe, but the world.The current buildup is breathtaking in scope and will certainly prove devastating in its impact not just on this countrys foreign and domestic policies but also on the economic prospects of average Americans. When, in 2023, my colleague Ben Freeman and I first conceived of our book, The Trillion Dollar War Machine, we viewed it in part as a... Read more Source: Reining in the Pentagon appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
- — American “Micro-Militarism”
- at 4/23/26 7:31amWriting more than 2,000 years ago, the Greek historian Plutarch gave us an eloquent description of what modern historians now call “micro-militarism.” When an imperial power like Athens then, or America now, is in decline, its leaders often react emotionally by mounting seemingly bold military strikes in hopes of regaining the imperial grandeur thats slipping through their fingers. Instead of another of the great victories the empire won at its peak of power, however, such military misadventures only serve to accelerate the ongoing decline, erasing whatever aura of imperial majesty remains and revealing instead the moral rot deep inside the ruling elite. There is mounting historical evidence that America is indeed an empire in steep decline, while President Donald Trump’s... Read more Source: American Micro-Militarism appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
- — “You Dirty ORANGE Maniac! You Blew It All Up! Damn You to Hell!”
- at 4/21/26 7:38amWhen hes on full blast, Donald Trump (not so long ago the drill, baby, drill candidate for president) is distinctly a furnace. And he seems intent on turning this planet, our only world, into a version of the same. But heres the strange thing, when it comes to almost anything from Iran to suddenly firing two key women, Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem, in his government (but certainly not the no-less-chaotic men) theres no minute, it seems, when hes not flipping himself on his head and then spinning or stumbling or catapulting off in a new direction. Theres only one exception Ive noticed and, all too sadly, thats climate change, where everything he does every single thing... Read more Source: You Dirty ORANGE Maniac! You Blew It All Up! Damn You to Hell! appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
- — Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor…
- at 4/19/26 3:31pmIn late March, I sat in the gallery of the Supreme Court for the first time in my life. Throughout my 30 years of grassroots anti-poverty work, Ive joined countless protests and vigils outside the Court. In 2018, I was even arrested and held in detention for praying on its palatial steps. Now, I was seated with a clear view of the nine justices of the nation’s highest court. I was there as a guest of immigrant rights lawyers, as their team made oral arguments in Noem v. Al Otro Lado, the most significant case on the right to asylum in decades. In February, the Kairos Center (the organization I direct) authored an interfaith amicus brief on that very case,... Read more Source: Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor… appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
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