Tom Engelhardt
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His sixth and latest book, just published, is A Nation Unmade by War (Dispatch Books).Previous books include: Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World (with an introduction by Glenn Greenwald). Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050 (co-authored with Nick Turse), The United States of Fear, The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's, The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.
Articles by this author
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Views Monday, September 21, 2020 Fire and Fury Like the World Has Never Seen 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, "... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, September 08, 2020 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... Read more |
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Views Monday, August 10, 2020 It Could Have Been Different 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... Read more |
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Views Thursday, July 16, 2020 Donald J. Trump as Osama bin Laden's Revenge 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... Read more |
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Views Thursday, June 18, 2020 The Pre-History of the Decline and Fall of the American Empire: A Rant 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’... Read more |
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Views Monday, June 01, 2020 Donald Trump May Not Be Herbert Hoover 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... Read more |
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Views Thursday, April 30, 2020 The Killer-in-Chief “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... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, April 14, 2020 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... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, March 24, 2020 In Memoriam: A Planet of Missing Beauties 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... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, March 04, 2020 The Trump Conundrum Here’s the truth of it: I’d like a presidential pardon. Really, I would. And I think I deserve it more than Michael Milken or Rod Blagojevich or—because it’s obviously heading our way— Roger Stone (not to speak of Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort). Unlike the rest of them, I genuinely deserve a... Read more |