( Tomdispatch.com) – By the time you read this piece, it will already be out of date.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 […]
The Sports Pages of Death: Life in a Wounded and Wounding Land
( Tomdispatch.com) – 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 […]
America’s Sick Metamorphosis: Have we Awoken to find our Country a Trump Roach Hotel?
( Tomdispatch.com) – 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 […]
The Donald won’t be in Office Long, but will he be more Dangerous out of it?
( Tomdispatch.com) – 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 […]
White House Partying like it is 2021, with a Covid 9/11 Death Toll Every Day
( Tomdispatch.com) – ‘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 Republican Party does want to secede from the Union. I mean, who doesn’t? And hey, don’t you want to […]
The Fall of the American Empire on a Failing Planet
(Tomdispatch.com ) – 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 […]
State of Chaos: Can America Escape Trump’s Hellscape?
( Tomdispatch.com) – 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 […]
Has American History Bent toward Racism and the Southern Strategy, from Nixon to Trump?
( Tomdispatch.com ) – 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 […]
A Death on 5th Avenue: America’s Maestro of Mayhem
( Tomdispatch.com ) – 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 […]