Trumped
Give him credit. As a start, for that first surprise victory in 2016. No, I didn’t fully get it at the time, but I kind of get it now (since,…
Tom Engelhardt
2084-The World as It Might Be (Or Do I Mean Might Have Been?)
Honestly, what would George Orwell have written about this planet of ours, four decades after that ominous year 1984 passed from his fiction into history? And yes, in case you…
The Empire Is Going Down: But What Isn’t?
He’s the man of the hour (and you can choose your hour), win, lose, or draw. I mean, who can deny it? Certainly not the crowd at his debate with…
In a Lost Universe (With You Know Who): Creating a Genuine Hell on Earth
Imagine yourself in space, looking down on our world and yet unable to return any time soon. Consider it our bad luck, in fact, that Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita…
Trumptopia and Beyond-Is Reality the Biggest Fiction of All Today?
Yes, long ago, I dreamt of being a novelist. Two ancient manuscripts packed away in a distant corner of my closet attest to that (ir)reality, as does one novel focused…
The Candidate from Hell
Donald Trump is all too literally the candidate from hell and, yes, he’s threatening to take the United States and the world to — no place else! — hell and…
The Decline and Fall of Presidential America – Are We Now Living in a Defeat Culture?
It’s not a happenstance or some sad mistake that, barring a surprise, Americans will go to the polls in November to vote for one of two distinctly ancient men, now…
Welcome to Heat-Dome America
I’ve been writing about climate change for so many years now but, in truth, it was always something I read about and took in globally. It was happening out there, often in…
Making War on Planet Earth
Honestly, doesn’t it befuddle you? I mean, don’t you think we humans are kinda mad? And worse yet, at some deep level, we simply can’t seem to stop. All too…
Old Man World: Leftovers of the American Century
Let one old man deal with two others. I turn 80 in July, which makes me just over a year-and-a-half younger than Joe Biden and almost two years older than…
A Slow-Motion World War III?
I’ve been describing this world of ours, such as it is, for almost 23 years at TomDispatch. I’ve written my way through three-and-a-half presidencies — god save us, it could be…
Living on the Wrong World:A Planetary Cease-Fire Is Desperately Needed
On this planet of ours, it almost doesn’t matter who’s right and who’s wrong when it comes to our wars. Actually, let me correct that thought slightly: it certainly does…
The Last Superpower?
I was born on July 20, 1944, almost two years after Joe Biden arrived on this planet and almost a year before You Know Who, like me, landed in New…
The Ultimate Twosome – Nukes and Climate Change in 2024
Honestly, what strange creatures we are. Nothing stops us when it comes to destruction, does it? (And I’m not even thinking about the utter, ongoing devastation of Gaza.) I mean,…
A Slow-Motion Gaza Or How to Carbonize Planet Earth
Imagine this: humanity in its time on Earth has already come up with two distinct ways of destroying this planet and everything on it. The first is, of course, nuclear…
Are We the Dinosaurs of the 21st Century?
Let’s admit it: We are indeed mad creatures. This should truly have been the time of our discontent. The northern hemisphere just experienced the hottest summer in recorded history, including month by…
The Slow-Motion Equivalent of a Nuclear War?
Tell me, what planet are we actually on? All these decades later, are we really involved in a “second” or “new” Cold War? It’s certainly true that, as late as…
A Global Maui Moment
From the earliest kingdoms to late last night, history has been the story not just of the rise of great powers but of their decline and fall. So, normally, there…
Extremely Extreme
Hey, who knows? It could be the Gulf Stream collapsing or the planet eternally breaking heat records. But whatever the specifics, we’re living it right now, not in the next century, the…
A Third Way? Don’t Sell Us Short
In case you hadn’t noticed — and how could you not? — there have been more than 500 (yes, 500-plus!) wildfires burning across the vast reaches of Canada, an unheard-of number, and…
Living on a Smoke-Bomb of a Planet – September 11th, Climate-Change-Style
As it turns out, it’s never too late. I mention that only because last week, at nearly 79, I managed to visit Mars for the first time. You know, the…
What Happens When LTAI (Less Than Artificial Intelligence) Gives Way to AI?
After almost 79 years on this beleaguered planet, let me say one thing: this can’t end well. Really, it can’t. And no, I’m not talking about the most obvious issues…
War, What Is It Good For?
I was born on July 20, 1944, amid a vast global conflict already known as World War II. Though it ended with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in…
Prophesies, Then and Now – My Life at World’s End
Indulge me for a moment. This is how “The Prophecy” in my 1962 high school yearbook began. It was written by some of my classmates in the year we graduated from…
McCarthyism, Then and Now – And the (True) One-Party State in America
Can there be any question that we’re in a mad — and loud — new age of McCarthyism? Thank you, Kevin! And don’t forget the wildly over-the-top members of the so-called Freedom…
Old News in a New Year
Let me start 2023 with a glance back at a December news moment that caught my eye. To do so, however, I have to offer a bit of explanation. First,…
When Will Climate Change Become the Crucial Issue in American Elections?
Believe me, it’s strange to be an old man and feel like you’re living on a new planet. On November 7th, the day before the midterm elections, I took my…
An Obituary for Our World
Oddly enough, I’ve read obituaries with fascination from the time I was quite young. And yet, in all these years, I’ve never really reflected on that fact. I don’t know…
Living in a Sci-fi World
Honestly, if you had described this America to me more than half a century ago, I would have laughed in your face. Donald Trump becoming president? You must be kidding!…
The Decline and Fall of Everything (Including Me)
I find nothing strange in Joe Biden, at 79 (going on 80), being the oldest president in our history and possibly planning to run again in 2024. After all, who wouldn’t want…
Extreme Life – Or World War III (IV and V), Climate-Style
In recent weeks, a newly emboldened right-wing Supreme Court struck down a more than century-old New York law restricting the carrying of concealed weapons and a nearly 50-year-old precedent on abortion. Meanwhile, the…
The Ultimate Blowback Planet
Once upon a time, long, long ago — actually, it was early in the year 2000 — I was involved in publishing Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. It…
A Duck-and-Cover World? Welcome to the Ukraine Moment
Face it, we’re living in a world that, while anything but exceptional, is increasingly the exception to every rule. Only the other day, 93-year-old Noam Chomsky had something to say…
Ukraine in Perspective
A Historical Feast of Death and Destruction from the Peloponnesian Wars to Late Tomorrow Night Excuse me if I wander a little today — and if it bothers you, don’t…
Cold War II or World War III?
He’s our very own emperor from hell, an updated version of Nero who, in legend, burned down Rome on a whim, though ours prefers drowning Washington. Why, just the other day,…
My Life with Maus Or How I Was Banned (Even If in a Second-Hand Way) by a Trumpian World
Sometimes life has a way of making you realize things about yourself. Recently, I discovered that an urge of mine, almost four decades old, had been the very opposite of…
America’s Two Pandemics
Imagine that you were experiencing all of this (and by this, I mean our lives right now) as if it were a novel, à la Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. The…
What Will We Remember of 2022?
Let me start 2022 by heading back — way, way back — for a moment. It’s easy to forget just how long this world has been a dangerous place for…
My Year and Welcome to It
Whether the pandemic that’s swept the world started from a bat or not, as 2021 ends, I think it’s safe to say that we’re all far battier than we were when it…
Welcome to the Martians!
Our World Is Increasingly Like a Science-Fiction Novel Who knew that Martians, inside monstrous tripodal machines taller than many buildings, actually ululated, that they made eerily haunting “ulla, ulla, ulla,…
Welcome to the American Century – Even If It Is a Hell on Earth
On February 17, 1941, less than 10 months before the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor and the U.S. found itself in a global war, Henry Luce, in an editorial in Life magazine (which…
Assassins-in-Chief and Their Brood
What a way to end a war! Apologies all around! We’re so damn sorry — or actually, maybe not! I’m thinking, of course, about CENTCOM commander General Kenneth F. McKenzie,…
The Decline and Fall of the Roman… Whoops!… American Empire
They weren’t kidding when they called Afghanistan the “graveyard of empires.” Indeed, that cemetery has just taken another imperial body. And it wasn’t pretty, was it? Not that anyone should be…
My Extreme World
Admittedly, I hadn’t been there for 46 years, but old friends of mine still live (or at least lived) in the town of Greenville, California, and now… well, it’s more…
Failed Empire?
It was all so long ago, in a world seemingly without challengers. Do you even remember when we Americans lived on a planet with a recumbent Russia, a barely rising…
Living on a Sci-Fi Planet
Yes, once upon a time I regularly absorbed science fiction and imagined futures of wonder, but mainly of horror. What else could you think, if you read H.G. Wells’s War of…
A World at the Edge
Let me start with my friend and the boat. Admittedly, they might not seem to have anything to do with each other. The boat, a guided-missile destroyer named the USS Curtis…
American-Style War ’til the End of Time?
Here’s the strange thing in an ever-stranger world: I was born in July 1944 in the midst of a devastating world war. That war ended in August 1945 with the…
Slaughter Central
By the time you read this piece, it will already be out of date. The reason’s simple enough. No matter what mayhem I describe, with so much all-American weaponry in…
The Greatest Of All Pandemic Is Already Upon Us
Here’s one of the things I now do every morning. I go to the online Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center and check out the figures there — global coronavirus cases and deaths,…
The American Century Ends Early
Like Gregor Samsa, the never-to-be-forgotten character in Franz Kafka’s story “The Metamorphosis,” we awoke on January 7th to discover that we, too, were “a giant insect” with “a domelike brown…
Been There, Done That (Not!) – The Imperial Presidency Comes Home to Roost
Joe Biden’s got a problem — and so do I. And so, in fact, do we. At 76 years old, you’d think I’d experienced it all when it comes to…
Saying Goodbye to the Con-Man-in-Chief
2021 has indeed begun and god knows what it has in store for us. But unless, somehow, we’re surprised beyond imagining, The Donald is indeed going to leave the White…
Partyland 2020
What If, After 9/11, George W. Bush Had Thrown Parties? And What If, After the Pandemic Arrived, Donald J. Trump Had Launched a Global War on Covid-19? 'Tis the season…
The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Empire Or What It Means to Fall on a Failing Planet
We’re now living in an age of opacity, as Rudy Giuliani pointed out in a courtroom recently. Here was the exchange: “‘In the plaintiffs’ counties, they were denied the opportunity to…
State of Chaos: Donald Trump Knew Us Better Than We Knew Ourselves
In 2016 as now, he was the candidate of chaos. Yes, he was a billionaire (or wanna-be billionaire or in-hock billionaire, not to mention a liar, a cheat, and a scoundrel), but from the beginning…
Beyond Our Control: America in the Mid-Seventies and 2020
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…
America’s Maestro of Death and Destruction
Yes, when he was running for president, he did indeed say: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? It's,…
Fire and Fury Like the World Has Never Seen, 2020 Version
It was August 2017 and Donald Trump had not yet warmed up to Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s portly dictator. In fact, in typical Trumpian fashion, he was pissed at the…
Fourth World Or American Carnage From a Pandemic President
The year was 1991 and the United States was suddenly the globe’s lone superpower, its ultimate hyperpower, the last and greatest of its kind, the soon-to-be-indispensable nation. The only one…
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