By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – Herd immunity? Don’t count on it. Not if that “herd” is the U.S. military. According to news reports, at least a third of active-duty military personnel or those in the National Guard have opted out of getting the coronavirus vaccine. That figure, by the way, doesn’t even […]
Has the Far Right infiltrated the US Armed Forces?
By Nan Levinson | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – It was around noon and I was texting a friend about who-knows-what when I added, almost as an afterthought: “tho they seem to be invading the Capitol at the mo.” I wasn’t faintly as blasé as that may sound on January 6th, especially when it became […]
The Border-Industrial Complex in the Post-Trump Era: The Crisis is Capitalism
By Todd Miller | – ( Tomdispatchcom ) – In late February, I drove to see the Trump wall in Sasabe, Arizona. As soon as I parked, a green-striped Border Patrol vehicle stationed a quarter of a mile away began to creep down the dirt road toward us. Just ahead, a dystopian “No Trespassing” sign […]
On January 6th, the U.S. Became a Foreign Country
By Kevin Tillman | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – Just about everyone was shocked by what happened at the Capitol building on January 6th. But as a former soldier in America’s forever wars, horrifying as the scenes were, I also found what happened strangely familiar, almost inevitable. I thought that, if only we had taken our […]
We’re Stalked by the 4 Horsemen of Apocalyptic Media: Rush, Roger, Rupert, and The Donald May Ride Forever
By Robert Lipsyte | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – The Four Horsemen of our media apocalypse — Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch, and Donald Trump — have ridden roughshod over us this past half-century leaving their hoofprints on our politics, our culture, and our lives. Two of them are gone now, but their legacies, including […]
The Real Threats to America are the Pandemic and Poverty; why Give Ever More Money to the Pentagon?
By Mandy Smithberger | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – This country is in a crisis of the first order. More than half a million of us have died thanks to Covid-19. Food insecurity is on the rise, with nearly 24 million Americans going hungry, including 12 million children. Unemployment claims filed since the pandemic began have […]
The Unpatriots: What the Storming of the Capitol looks Like to a Military Spouse
By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – “Are you okay?” asked a friend and military spouse in the voicemail she left me on the afternoon the mob of Trump supporters breached the Capitol so violently. At home with a new baby, her Navy reservist husband stationed in Germany, the thoughts running through her head […]
Demilitarizing Our Democracy: How the National Security State Has Come to Dominate a “Civilian” Government
By Mandy Smithberger and William Hartung | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – This month’s insurrection at the Capitol revealed the dismal failure of the Capitol Police and the Department of Defense to use their expertise and resources to thwart a clear and present danger to our democracy. As the government reform group Public Citizen tweeted, […]
How Bush’s Wars led to Trump’s Insurrection: From Occupying Iraq to Occupying the Capitol
By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – “I got out of the Marines and within a few years, 15 of my buddies had killed themselves,” one veteran rifleman who served two tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq between 2003 and 2011 said to me recently. “One minute they belonged and the next, they were […]