Articles by: Tom Engelhardt

A man walks through wildfire wreckage Friday, Aug. 11, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. Hawaii emergency management records show no indication that warning sirens sounded before people ran for their lives from wildfires on Maui that wiped out a historic town. [AP Photo/ Rick Bowmer]

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 would be nothing particularly out of the ordinary about the aging America of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, a classic imperial power distinctly in decline and threatening to split into[Read More…]

by 11/09/2023 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Extremely Extreme

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 next decade, or even next year. You couldn’t miss it — at least so you might think — if you were living in the sweltering Southwest; especially in broiling, record-setting Phoenix with 30 straight[Read More…]

by 03/08/2023 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
A Third Way? Don’t Sell Us Short

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 more than half of them completely out of (human) control in a record-shattering fire season. That’s been true for seemingly endless weeks now with no end in sight. (And, by[Read More…]

by 14/07/2023 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Living on a Smoke-Bomb of a Planet – September 11th, Climate-Change-Style

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 red planet, or rather — so it seemed to me — the orange planet. And take my word for it, it was eerie as hell. There was no sun, just a[Read More…]

by 16/06/2023 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
What Happens When LTAI (Less Than Artificial Intelligence) Gives Way to AI?

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 ranging from the war in Ukraine to the climate disaster. What I have in mind is that latest, greatest human invention: artificial intelligence. It doesn’t seem that complicated to me.[Read More…]

by 12/05/2023 Comments are Disabled World
War, What Is It Good For?

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 August 1945 before I could say much more than “Mama” or “Dada,” in some strange fashion, I grew up at war. Living in New York City, I was near no[Read More…]

by 24/04/2023 Comments are Disabled World
Prophesies, Then and Now – My Life at World’s End

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 Friends Seminary in New York City. “Being an historian, I am jotting down these notes out of habit, but what I saw and experienced two days ago I am sure[Read More…]

by 24/03/2023 Comments are Disabled World
McCarthyism, Then and Now – And the (True) One-Party State in America

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 Caucus and their Republican associates, including that charmer, lyin’ George Santos, Jewish-space-laser-and-white-balloon-carrying Marjorie Taylor Greene, and — once again running for president — the man who never lost, Donald Trump-em-all. I’d like to say it[Read More…]

by 22/02/2023 Comments are Disabled World
Old News in a New Year

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, the obvious: I’m an old guy and, though I spend significant parts of any day scrolling through endless websites covering aspects of our ever-changing world, I have a subscription —[Read More…]

by 06/01/2023 Comments are Disabled World
When Will Climate Change Become the Crucial Issue in American Elections?

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 usual afternoon walk in New York City and I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt! That was a first for me. And no wonder, since it was 76 degrees out —[Read More…]

by 21/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
A home is engulfed in flames as the Dixie fire rages on in Greenville, California on August 5, 2021. (Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images)

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 whether it was out of some indirect fascination with death and the end of it all or curiosity about the wholeness (or half-ness or brokenness) of an individual life in[Read More…]

by 02/11/2022 Comments are Disabled World
Living in a Sci-fi World

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! If you want a bizarre image, just imagine him in the company of Abraham Lincoln. I mean, really, what’s happened to us? Not, of course, that we haven’t had bizarre[Read More…]

by 29/08/2022 Comments are Disabled World
Image: End of death by Jaan is licensed under CC BY 2.0 / Flickr

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 to end up in the record books? Were he to be nominated and then beat the also-aging Donald Trump, or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, or even Fox News’s eternally popular Tucker Carlson, he would[Read More…]

by 12/08/2022 Comments are Disabled World
It’s Time. Pen & Ink on vellum embroidered on canvas/  by Priti Gulati Cox

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 January 6th Committee has been laying out in graphic televised detail how our last president tried to subvert the 2020 election.  Inflation, of course, continues to run riot; gas prices[Read More…]

by 06/07/2022 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
The Ultimate Blowback Planet

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 had been written by the eminent scholar of Asia, former CIA consultant, and cold warrior Chalmers Johnson. I was his editor at Metropolitan Books. In its introduction, using a word[Read More…]

by 06/06/2022 Comments are Disabled World
A Duck-and-Cover World? Welcome to the Ukraine Moment

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 about that. Mind you, he’s seen a bit of our world since, in 1939, he wrote his first article for his elementary school newspaper on the fall of the Spanish[Read More…]

by 25/04/2022 1 comment World
Ukraine in Perspective

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 blame me, blame Vladimir Putin.  After all, I didn’t decide to invade Ukraine, the place my grandfather fled almost 140 years ago. I suspect, in fact, that I was an[Read More…]

by 08/04/2022 2 comments World
Cold War II or World War III?

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, Donald Trump — and you knew perfectly well who I meant — bent the ears of 250 top Republican donors for 84 minutes. Among other things, he assured those all-American[Read More…]

by 18/03/2022 Comments are Disabled World
My Life with Maus Or How I Was Banned (Even If in a Second-Hand Way) by a Trumpian World

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 that of a rural Tennessee school board this January. In another life, I played a role in what could be thought of as the unbanning of the graphic novel Maus.[Read More…]

by 17/02/2022 Comments are Disabled World
America’s Two Pandemics

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 famed author of Robinson Crusoe — Defoe claimed it had been written by the fictional Crusoe himself — was five years old in 1665. That was when a year-long visitation of the[Read More…]

by 01/02/2022 Comments are Disabled World
What Will We Remember of 2022?

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 human beings. I thought about this recently when I stumbled upon a little memoir my Aunt Hilda scrawled, decades ago, in a small notebook. In it, she commented in passing:[Read More…]

by 06/01/2022 Comments are Disabled World
My Year and Welcome to It

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 began. In my neighborhood at least, as this year draws to a close, that old Lone Ranger line, “Who was that masked man?,” again applies to just about anyone. In fact, as[Read More…]

by 23/12/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Welcome to the Martians!

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, ulla” sounds? Well, let me tell you that they do — or rather did when they were devastating London. I know that because I recently reread H.G. Wells’s 1898 novel War[Read More…]

by 24/11/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Welcome to the American Century – Even If It Is a Hell on Earth

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 he founded along with Time and Fortune), declared the years to come “the American Century.”  He then urged this country’s leaders to “exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes[Read More…]

by 02/11/2021 Comments are Disabled World
A man grieves during a mass funeral for members of a family was killed in a U.S. drone airstrike, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021. (Photo: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times)

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, Jr.’s belated apology for the drone assassination of seven children as the last act, or perhaps final war crime, in this country’s 20-year-long Afghan nightmare. Where to begin (or end, for that[Read More…]

by 29/09/2021 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
Handover ceremony at Camp Anthonic, from US Army to Afghan Special Forces, Helmand province, Afghanistan, May 2, 2021.

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 surprised. Even after 20 years of preparation, a burial never is. In fact, the shock and awe(fulness) in Kabul and Washington over these last weeks shouldn’t have been surprising, given[Read More…]

by 07/09/2021 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
My Extreme World

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 or less gone, though they survived.  The Dixie Fire, one of those devastating West Coast blazes, had already “blackened” 504 square miles of Northern California in what was still essentially[Read More…]

by 12/08/2021 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Failed Empire?

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 China, and no obvious foes except what later came to be known as an “axis of evil,” three countries then incapable of endangering this one? Oh, and, as it turned[Read More…]

by 27/07/2021 1 comment Imperialism
Living on a Sci-Fi Planet

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 the Worlds under the covers by flashlight while your parents thought you were asleep?  Of course, that novel was a futuristic fantasy, involving as it did Martians arriving in London to[Read More…]

by 01/07/2021 Comments are Disabled World
A World at the Edge

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 Wilbur, reportedly passed through the Straits of Taiwan and into the South China Sea, skirting the Paracel Islands that China has claimed as its own. It represented yet another Biden-era challenge to the planet’s rising[Read More…]

by 07/06/2021 1 comment World
American-Style War ’til the End of Time?

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 atomic obliteration of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by the most devastating bombs in history up to that moment, given the sweet code names “Little Boy” and “Fat Man.” I was[Read More…]

by 29/04/2021 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
Slaughter Central

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 this world of ours, there’s no way to keep up. Often, despite the headlines that go with mass killings here, there’s almost no way even to know. On this planet[Read More…]

by 14/04/2021 Comments are Disabled World
The Greatest Of All Pandemic Is Already Upon Us

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, U.S. coronavirus cases and deaths. And I do so the way that, not so long ago, I would have opened the sports pages and checked out the latest scores of[Read More…]

by 19/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Photo Win McNamee/Getty Images

Mobs carrying Trump “Law & Order” & Gadsen “Don’t Tread on Me’ Flags Breach Locked US Capitol Doors

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 belly divided into stiff arched segments” and numerous “pitifully thin” legs that “waved helplessly” before our eyes. If you prefer, though, you can just say it: we opened our eyes[Read More…]

by 18/02/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Been There, Done That (Not!) – The Imperial Presidency Comes Home to Roost

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 this country and its presidencies. Or most of it, anyway. I’ve been around since Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. Born on July 20, 1944, I’m a little “young” to remember[Read More…]

by 01/02/2021 1 comment Imperialism
Saying Goodbye to the Con-Man-in-Chief

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 House soon and, much as I hate to admit it, in some strange fashion we’re going to miss him.  Of course, it will be beyond a great relief to see[Read More…]

by 05/01/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Partyland 2020

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 to be folly Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la Don(ald) we now our gay apparel, Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la!… It’s party time in the nation’s capital and the Christmas spirit reigns supreme, even if the Texas[Read More…]

by 21/12/2020 Comments are Disabled World
The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Empire Or What It Means to Fall on a Failing Planet

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 have an unobstructed observation and ensure opacity,’ Giuliani said. ‘I’m not quite sure I know what opacity means. It probably means you can see, right?’ “‘It means you can’t,’ said[Read More…]

by 02/12/2020 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
State of Chaos: Donald Trump Knew Us Better Than We Knew Ourselves

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 he appealed to the forces of order in America that were also, as it happened, the forces of chaos. Donald Trump entered the presidential sweepstakes, or to be completely accurate rode[Read More…]

by 11/11/2020 3 comments World
Beyond Our Control: America in the Mid-Seventies and 2020

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 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 moment. The Vietnam War,[Read More…]

by 02/11/2020 Comments are Disabled World
America’s Maestro of Death and Destruction

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, like, incredible.” Then he won — and this November 3rd (or thereafter), whether he wins or loses, we’re likely to find out that, when it comes to his base, he was[Read More…]

by 05/10/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Fire and Fury Like the World Has Never Seen, 2020 Version

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 Korean leader and, no less typically, he lashed out verbally, threatening that country with a literal hell on Earth. As he put it, “They will be met with fire and fury like[Read More…]

by 21/09/2020 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Fourth World Or American Carnage From a Pandemic President

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 left — alone, utterly alone and triumphant atop the world. Who could have asked for more? Or better? It had been a Cold War fantasy of the first order —[Read More…]

by 09/09/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Free image download: https://pixabay.com/de

It Could Have Been Different – My World and (Unfortunately) Welcome to It

Let me be blunt. This wasn’t the world I imagined for my denouement. Not faintly. Of course, I can’t claim I ever really imagined such a place. Who, in their youth, considers their death and the world that might accompany it, the one you might leave behind for younger generations? I’m 76 now. True, if I were lucky (or perhaps[Read More…]

by 10/08/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Osama bin Laden Won (Twice)

Osama bin Laden Won (Twice)

It’s July 2020 and I’m about to turn 76, which, as far as I’m concerned, officially makes me an old man. So put up with my aging, wandering brain here, since (I swear) I wasn’t going to start this piece with Donald J. Trump, no matter his latest wild claims or bizarre statements, increasingly white nationalist and pro-Confederate positions (right down to[Read More…]

by 16/07/2020 Comments are Disabled World
The Age of Disappointment? Or How the American Century Ends

The Age of Disappointment? Or How the American Century Ends

Let me rant for a moment. I don’t do it often, maybe ever. I’m not Donald Trump. Though I’m only two years older than him, I don’t even know how to tweet and that tells you everything you really need to know about Tom Engelhardt in a world clearly passing me by. Still, after years in which America’s streets were[Read More…]

by 19/06/2020 Comments are Disabled World
A Graduation Speech for an Age of Collapse

A Graduation Speech for an Age of Collapse

Class of 2020, wherever you are, I had planned to address you on this graduation day. But how can I? Yes, I know that former President Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Tom Hanks all took part in elaborate online graduation ceremonies, offering commentary, advice, and encouragement in our now campus-less world, but I’m a hapless old guy with a flip phone from another age. And,[Read More…]

by 01/06/2020 Comments are Disabled World
The Assassin-in-Chief Comes Home

The Assassin-in-Chief Comes Home

“Be assured of one thing: whichever candidate you choose at the polls in November, you aren’t just electing a president of the United States; you are also electing an assassin-in-chief.” So I wrote back in June 2012, with a presidential election approaching. I was referring then to the war on terror’s CIA and military drone assassination programs, which first revved up in[Read More…]

by 01/05/2020 Comments are Disabled World
Might the Coronavirus Be a Peacemaker?

Might the Coronavirus Be a Peacemaker?

 Let me quote a Trumpian figure from long ago, Henry Ford. That’s right, the bigot who created the Ford Motor Company (and once even ran for president). Back in 1916, in an interview with a Chicago Tribune reporter, he offered this bit of wisdom on the subject of history: “Say, what do I care about Napoleon? What do we care about what they did 500 or 1,000[Read More…]

by 14/04/2020 Comments are Disabled World
A Planet of Missing Beauties – In Memoriam

A Planet of Missing Beauties – In Memoriam

The other morning, walking at the edge of a local park, I caught sight of a beautiful red cardinal, the first bird I ever saw some 63 years ago. Actually, to make that sentence accurate, I should probably have put either “first” or “ever saw” in quotation marks. After all, I was already 12 years old and, even as a city[Read More…]

by 25/03/2020 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
War Addicts, Inc.

War Addicts, Inc.

My first question is simple enough: After 18-plus years of our forever wars, where are all the questions? Almost two decades of failing American wars across a startlingly large part of the planet and I’d like to know, for instance, who’s been fired for them? Who’s been impeached? Who’s even paying attention? I mean, if another great power had been[Read More…]

by 14/02/2020 1 comment Imperialism
The Fate of the Earth – See Page Five

The Fate of the Earth – See Page Five

Let me betray my age for a moment. Some of you, I know, will be shocked, but I still read an actual newspaper. Words on real paper every day. I’m talking about the New York Times, and something stuck with me from the January 9th edition of that “paper” paper. Of course, in the world of the Internet, that’s already ancient history[Read More…]

by 27/01/2020 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
The Global War of Error – No, That’s Not a Typo

The Global War of Error – No, That’s Not a Typo

Yes, our infrastructure stinks, our schools are failing, this country’s a nightmare of inequality, and there’s a self-promoting madman in the White House, so isn’t it time to take pride in the rare institutional victories America has had in this century? Arguably, none has been more striking than the triumphal success of the American war system. Oh, you’re going to bring that up immediately?[Read More…]

by 10/01/2020 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
Is Donald Trump the Second 9/11? Or Is He the Third?

Is Donald Trump the Second 9/11? Or Is He the Third?

Here’s the question at hand — and I guarantee you that you’ll read it here first: Is Donald Trump the second or even possibly the third 9/11? Because truly, he has to be one or the other. Let me explain, and while I do, keep this in mind: as 2019 ends, thanks to Brexit and the victory of Boris Johnson[Read More…]

by 23/12/2019 2 comments World
The Age of Trump, the End of What?

The Age of Trump, the End of What?

French king Louis XV reputedly said, “Après moi, le déluge.” (“After me, the flood.”) Whether that line was really his remains unclear, but not long after his death did come the French Revolution. We should be so lucky! Our all-American version of Louis XV, Donald I, is incapable, I suspect, of even imagining a world after him. Given the historically unprecedented way[Read More…]

by 27/11/2019 Comments are Disabled World
Down the Rabbit Hole With Donald Trump

Down the Rabbit Hole With Donald Trump

There can be no question about it. Donald Trump is Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts. “Off with his head!” was the president’s essential suggestion for — to offer just one example — a certain whistleblower who fingered him on that now notorious Ukrainian phone call. And if The Donald hasn’t also been playing the roles of White Rabbit, Mad Hatter, and other characters from Carroll’s[Read More…]

by 04/11/2019 1 comment World
American Brexit

American Brexit

  Donald Trump may prove to be the ultimate Brexiteer. Back in August 2016, in the midst of his presidential campaign, he proudly tweeted, “They will soon be calling me MR. BREXIT!” On the subject of the British leaving the European Union (EU) he’s neither faltered nor wavered. That June, he was already cheering on British voters, 51.9% of whom had just opted[Read More…]

by 14/10/2019 Comments are Disabled World
Sea Levels Are Rising and So Are We!

Sea Levels Are Rising and So Are We!

Look what Greta started and what she did to me! I took part in the recent climate-strike march in New York City — one of a quarter-million people (or maybe 60,000) who turned out there, along with four million others across all seven continents. Then I came home and promptly collapsed. Which tells you one thing: I’m not 16 years old like Greta Thunberg, the[Read More…]

by 30/09/2019 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
On the Precipice: The Collective Asteroid of Human History

On the Precipice: The Collective Asteroid of Human History

Worlds end. Every day. We all die sooner or later. When you get to my age, it’s a subject that can’t help but be on your mind. What’s unusual is this: it’s not just increasingly ancient folks like me who should be thinking such thoughts anymore. After all, worlds of a far larger sort end, too. It’s happened before. Ask the[Read More…]

by 17/09/2019 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Invasion! Who Are the Real Invaders on Planet Earth?

Invasion! Who Are the Real Invaders on Planet Earth?

He crossed the border without permission or, as far as I could tell, documentation of any sort. I’m speaking about Donald Trump’s uninvited, unasked-for invasion of my personal space. He’s there daily, often hourly, whether I like it or not, and I don’t have a Department of Homeland Security to separate him from his children, throw them all in degrading versions of prison[Read More…]

by 06/09/2019 Comments are Disabled World
Orwell Revisited in the Age of Trump

Orwell Revisited in the Age of Trump

I, Winston Smith… I mean, Tom Engelhardt… have not just been reading a dystopian novel, but, it seems, living one — and I suspect I’ve been living one all my life. Yes, I recently reread George Orwell’s classic 1949 novel, 1984. In it, Winston Smith, a secret opponent of the totalitarian world of Oceania, one of three great imperial superpowers left[Read More…]

by 19/08/2019 1 comment World
Ambush at Kamikaze Pass

Ambush at Kamikaze Pass

Call it a summer whim or something about this grim moment of ours, but I had an urge to post at TomDispatch my very first piece of published writing. It appeared 48 years ago in what was, at the time, one of the more obscure journals on the face of the Earth, one I helped found as a then-antiwar-China-scholar-to-be: the Bulletin of Concerned Asian[Read More…]

by 12/08/2019 2 comments Arts/Literature
Planet of the Surreal – Turning 75 in the Age of Trump

Planet of the Surreal – Turning 75 in the Age of Trump

As I turn 75, there’s no simpler way to put it than this: I’m an old man on a new planet — and, in case it isn’t instantly obvious, that’s not good news on either score. I still have a memory of being a camp counselor in upstate New York more than half a century ago. I was perhaps 20[Read More…]

by 18/07/2019 2 comments Life/Philosophy
Why Is American Aggression Missing in Action? 

Why Is American Aggression Missing in Action? 

Headlined “U.S. Seeks Other Ways to Stop Iran Shy of War,” the article was tucked away on page A9 of a recent New York Times. Still, it caught my attention. Here’s the first paragraph: “American intelligence and military officers are working on additional clandestine plans to counter Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf, pushed by the White House to develop new options that[Read More…]

by 02/07/2019 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
If Donald Trump Is the Symptom… Then What’s the Disease?

If Donald Trump Is the Symptom… Then What’s the Disease?

Don’t try to deny it! The political temperature of this country is rising fast. Call it Trump change or Trump warming, if you want, but grasp one thing: increasingly, you’re in a different land and, whatever happens to Donald Trump, the results down the line are likely to be ever less pretty. Trump change isn’t just an American phenomenon, it’s[Read More…]

by 17/06/2019 Comments are Disabled World
Suicide Watch on Planet Earth

Suicide Watch on Planet Earth

As Notre Dame burned, as the flames leapt from its roof of ancient timbers, many of us watched in grim horror. Hour after hour, on screen after screen, channel after channel, you could see that 850-year-old cathedral, a visiting spot for 13 million people annually, being gutted, its roof timbers flaring into the evening sky, its steeple collapsing in a ball of fire. It was dramatic[Read More…]

by 26/04/2019 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Tom Engelhardt-American War Is Off the Charts

Tom Engelhardt-American War Is Off the Charts

How the U.S. Military Feeds at the Terror Trough Here’s a statement it might be hard to disagree with: American war is off the charts. Still, I’d like to explain — but I’m nervous about doing so. I know perfectly well that the next word I plan to write will send most of you tumbling elsewhere in a universe in[Read More…]

by 15/04/2019 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
A Swiftian Modest Proposal for the President

A Swiftian Modest Proposal for the President

Or How to Solve the Border and China Problems in One Swell Foop Call me crazy, if you want, but I think I see how to do it! We have two intractable issues, one intractable president, and an intractable world, but what if it weren’t so? What if those two intractable problems could be swept off the table by a[Read More…]

by 04/03/2019 1 comment World
 Veni, Vidi, Tweeti (I Came, I Saw, I Tweeted)- An Obituary for the Republic

 Veni, Vidi, Tweeti (I Came, I Saw, I Tweeted)- An Obituary for the Republic

What dreamers they were! They imagined a kind of global power that would leave even Rome at its Augustan height in the shade. They imagined a world made for one, a planet that could be swallowed by a single great power. No, not just great, but beyond anything ever seen before — one that would build (as its National Security Strategy put[Read More…]

by 15/02/2019 Comments are Disabled Imperialism
A new study from Brown University's Costs of War Project found that the U.S. "War on Terror" has killed half a million people in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. (Photo: Spc. Phillip McTaggart/Flickr/cc)

“The Bleeding Wound”- Afghanistan and the Implosion of America

As I approach 75, I’m having a commonplace experience for my age. I live with a brain that’s beginning to dump previously secure memories — names, the contents of books I read long ago (or all too recently), events, whatever. If you’re of a certain age yourself, you know the story. Recently, however, I realized that this experience of loss,[Read More…]

by 24/01/2019 Comments are Disabled World
 Precision Warfare? Don’t Make Me Laugh 

 Precision Warfare? Don’t Make Me Laugh 

You remember. It was supposed to be twenty-first-century war, American-style: precise beyond imagining; smart bombs; drones capable of taking out a carefully identified and tracked human being just about anywhere on Earth; special operations raids so pinpoint-accurate that they would represent a triumph of modern military science.  Everything “networked.”  It was to be a glorious dream of limited destruction combined[Read More…]

by 21/07/2017 1 comment Imperialism
The Election From Hell

The Election From Hell

As the world careens toward “an environment never experienced before,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the two parties to the American spectacle continues to insist that climate change is a hoax. Meanwhile, the other party, the one theoretically promoting much-needed responses to climate change, wasn’t even willing to highlight the subject in prime time on any of the last three days of its convention. In other words, the deepest, most unnerving realities of our world are, in essence, missing in action in election 2016. You want to be afraid? Be afraid of that!

by 09/08/2016 3 comments World
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