( Tomdispatch.com) – Americans may already be lying themselves out of what little remains of their democracy. The big lie uniting and motivating today’s Republicans is, of course, that Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, won the 2020 presidential election. Other big lies in our recent past include the notion that climate change is nothing but […]
Endless War Is A Feature of Our National Programming: On Pulling the Plug on the War Machine
By William Astore | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – I know, I know: President Joe Biden has announced that our combat troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan by 9/11 of this year, marking the 20th anniversary of the colossal failure of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to defend America. Of course, that other 9/11 […]
The Pentagon prefers a Conventional War it Can Win, but is likely stuck with Guerrilla Wars it Can’t
( Tomdispatch.com ) – The future isn’t what it used to be. As a teenager in the 1970s, I watched a lot of TV science fiction shows, notably Space: 1999 and UFO, that imagined a near future of major moon bases and alien attacks on Earth. Movies of that era like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A […]
Failing Upward: Pentagon’s more and more Expensive Boondoggles (that don’t even work)
( Tomdispatch.com) – Cancel culture is a common, almost viral, term in political and social discourse these days. Basically, somebody expresses views considered to be outrageous or vile or racist or otherwise insensitive and inappropriate. In response, that person is “canceled,” perhaps losing a job or otherwise sidelined and silenced. In being deplatformed by Twitter, […]
Joe Biden’s Peace Force? A Multipoint Plan to End War as We Know It
( Tomdispatch.com ) – When it comes to war, if personnel is policy, America is yet again in deep trouble. As retired Army Major Danny Sjursen recently pointed out at TomDispatch, when it comes to foreign policy, President Joe Biden’s new cabinet and advisers are well stocked with retired generals, reconstituted neocons, unapologetic hawks, and […]
We’re all POWs Now: When Will America Free Itself From War?
( Tomdispatch.com) – “POWs Never Have A Nice Day.” That sentiment was captured on a button a friend of mine wore for our fourth grade class photo in 1972. That prisoners of war could never have such a day was reinforced by the sad face on that button. Soon after, American POWs would indeed be […]
On being Black and Blue in America
( Tomdispatch.com ) – As I lived through the nightmare of the election campaign just past, I often found myself dreaming of another American world entirely. Anything but this one. In that spirit, I also found myself looking at a photo of my fourth-grade class, vintage 1972. Tacked to the wall behind our heads was […]
Trump’s Over-the-Top War Talk is a War Crime: ‘Systematic, Constant, Vicious, Remorseless’
What pops into your head when you hear the number 1,000 in a political-military context? Having studied German military history, I immediately think of Adolf Hitler’s confident boast that his Third Reich would last a thousand years. In reality, of course, a devastating world war brought that Reich down in a mere 12 years. Only […]
Killing Democracy in America: The Military-Industrial Complex and Forever Wars as our other Pandemic
( Tomdispatch.com) – The phrase “thinking about the unthinkable” has always been associated with the unthinkable cataclysm of a nuclear war, and rightly so. Lately, though, I’ve been pondering another kind of unthinkable scenario, nearly as nightmarish (at least for a democracy) as a thermonuclear Armageddon, but one that’s been rolling out in far slower […]
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