( Tomdispatch.com ) – Follow a line south and west from the Gaza strip, continue through Egypt, and you’ll end up in another place where a genocide is in progress. It’s one we don’t hear much about in the United States, probably because it’s happening in an African nation, one of those places Donald Trump […]
Trump is trying Hard to do a bad Job, and that Works for Him; Not so much, for Us
( Tomdispatch.com ) – I first heard the expression “strategic incompetence” in El Salvador in December 1993. Along with my partner and two friends, I’d been recruited to do some electoral training there. We were working with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, or FMLN, a coalition of leftist parties that had led a long-running […]
The Death of Civil Rights in the Age of Trump
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Warning: dangers in the mirror are often closer than they may appear. In other words, the next few paragraphs may seem to be hyperbole but are, in fact, expressions of reality (animated by a cold fury). On September 8, 2025, the Supreme Court did its best to murder what’s left of […]
From Gaza to Trump, Some of us Saw this Coming
( Tomdispatch.com ) – I spent the summer of 1965 arguing about the Vietnam War. I was 13, and my interlocutor was my 18-year-old camp counselor in Vermont. She was headed for U.C. Berkeley in the fall, where she would, as she later described it, “major in history and minor in rioting.” Meanwhile, I was […]
Trump Brings back Torture, Big Time
( Tomdispatch.com ) – I didn’t want to write this article. In fact, I had something relatively uplifting planned: an Independence Day piece about the rich implications for the present moment to be found in the Declaration of Independence. But other excellent writers beat me to that one. So instead, I reluctantly find myself once […]
How will Your Data be Used in an Age of Dark Enlightenment?
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Sometime in the late 1980s, I was talking with a friend on my landline (the only kind of telephone we had then). We were discussing logistics for an upcoming demonstration against the Reagan administration’s support for the Contras fighting the elected government of Nicaragua. We agreed that, when our call was […]
Trump isn’t even Trying to Hide the Racism Anymore
( Tomdispatch.com ) – On May 5th, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute held its annual fundraising gala. The event showcases the extraordinary imaginations of people who design exorbitant clothes and the gutsiness of those who dare (and can afford) to wear them. I’m dimly aware of this annual extravaganza because of […]
Trump Harvests Autocratic Powers Planted by Bush and Cheney
( Tomdispatch.com ) – In 2003, the Macedonian police arrested Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen vacationing in their country. They handed the unfortunate man over to the CIA, who shipped him off to one of their “black sites.” For those too young to remember (or who have quite understandably chosen to forget), “black sites” was […]
Trump rages to snuff out Democracy’s Candle: Will we Rage against the Dying of its Light?
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Allow me to stipulate that I do not wish to die. In fact, had anyone consulted me about the construction of the universe, I would have made my views on the subject quite clear: mortality is a terrible idea. I’m opposed to it in general. (In wiser moments, I know that […]
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