Tomgram

In an aphorism sometimes attributed to Leo Tolstoy, sometimes to John Gardner, all literature relies on one of two plots: a person goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town. Let me offer my own version. We might summarize the entire history of the human race in two words: people move. Everything else is just elaboration on that basic plot. Some of history’s worst atrocities can be attributed to certain people trying to control other people’s movements, whether by capturing them, herding them into prison camps (concentration camps, strategic hamlets, model villages), enslaving and transporting them, or warehousing them in besieged countries or regions while barricading the borders of anyplace to which they might want to flee, often... Read more

Thanks to our current misbegotten model of manhood, we are once again arguing about this moral question: Should former Cincinnati Reds player and manager Pete Rose be inducted into Baseball’s Hall of Fame? In a sane time, the proper answer would be: Are you kidding? Maybe many of you reading this couldn’t care less. Unfortunately, you probably should care because the real question in these chaotic times of ours is: What does the Hall of Fame stand for? In the same way, you might now wonder what America stands for and whether, in our moment, Pete Rose — bully, liar, cheat, sexual predator, and fan-favorite superstar athlete — has, in fact, become a sports surrogate for Donald Trump. Back in... Read more

Source: Ending Manhood in the Hall of Shame appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

“We’re back,” I tell the room. It’s January 21, 2029, and I can barely contain my excitement. “America is back!” I expect applause, but there is none. I try again, louder this time. “After four long years, America is finally back! We’re ready to resume our international obligations!” The members of the U.N. Human Rights Council are looking in every direction — except at me. I feel a tug on the sleeve of my suit jacket. I glance down and note that the representative from Morocco is passing me a slip of paper. All I see are numbers. “This is… a bill?” She nods. “Your international obligations.” “Fifty-two billion dollars?” “Four years of non-payment of U.N. contributions.  We rounded it... Read more

Recently, I’ve been turning off my iPhone — all the way off! — for 10 to 30 minutes at a time. I leave it somewhere in the house, while I try to live IRL (“in real life”), washing dishes, hanging up laundry, or even going for a walk, phoneless. In this hyper-connected world of ours, doing so, even for such a short time, often feels like an enormous act of self-deprivation — no podcasts, no long-distance communication with those I’m closest to, no social media, no para-social relationships, no steps of mine being counted, or micro-health-tracking going on. So much, in other words, missing in action. I’m not a digital native. In fact, I am what they call a late adopter. I didn’t... Read more

Source: A World Without iPhones? appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Thirty-five years after the start of the nuclear age with the first explosion of an atomic bomb, I visited the expanse of desert known as the Nevada Test Site, an hour’s drive northwest of Las Vegas. A pair of officials from the Department of Energy took me on a tour. They explained that nuclear tests were absolutely necessary. “Nuclear weapons are like automobiles,” one told me. “Ford doesn’t put a new automobile out on the highway until they’ve gone through a lengthy test process, driving hundreds of thousands of miles.” By then, in 1980, several hundred underground nuclear blasts had already occurred in Nevada, after the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty required that atomic testing take place below the earth’s... Read more

Source: Is Nuclear Winter a Climate Issue? appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Colorful career criminal Willie Sutton once may (or may not) have been asked why he robbed banks. “Because that is where the money is,” he supposedly replied. A similar principle may explain the first foreign trip of President Donald J. Trump’s second term, which was not to a traditional U.S. ally in Europe. Rather, he set off to visit the capitals of the Gulf hydrocarbon potentates Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. In royal palaces there, he feasted and was offered hundreds of billions of dollars in investments in American companies and opportunities for the Trump Organization, too. Qatar even courted controversy by giving him a $400 million Boeing 747-8 plane to serve as a future Air Force... Read more

This year, Pride Month arrives at an especially dire moment for the LGBTQ+ community. Under the second Trump administration, homophobic vitriol and violence are on the rise. On Elon Musk’s X platform, a “deepfake” video of Donald Trump canceling Pride Month has gone viral. And even as Pride celebrations continue as planned (in many places without as many corporate contributions), the attacks against LGBTQ+ people, especially transgender people, seem to be on steroids. After all, since taking office a second time, Trump has issued executive orders that ban transgender women in sports and transgender troops in the military, while limiting federal recognition to two genders. And his executive actions are only the spear tip of a significantly larger legislative attempt... Read more

Source: The War on Trans People appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Believe it or not, I had a transcendent experience at this year’s Border Security Expo, the annual event that brings Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) together with private industry. I hesitate to describe it that way, though, because I was on the exhibition hall floor and instantly found myself in the very heart of the U.S. border-industrial complex. It was early April and I was surrounded by the latest surveillance equipment — camera systems, drones, robodogs — from about 225 companies (a record number for such an event) displaying their wares at that Phoenix Convention Center. Many of the people there seemed all too excited that Donald Trump was once again president. You might... Read more

Source: Upside-Down World appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Leon Golub once related a story to a mutual friend. A Chicago artist famous for large canvases depicting crimson torture rooms in Central America, Golub had been asked what it meant to him to be a “Jewish political artist.” The painter’s quick reply was that he wasn’t a “Jewish political artist,” he was just a “political artist.” In the end, though, Golub came to believe that he had let himself off too easily, that his answer was too pat. Yes, he was a political artist. His paintings had focused not just on Latin America but on war-torn Vietnam and racism in the United States and South Africa. But he had consciously avoided Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.  Golub admitted that... Read more

Source: The Horrors Inflicted for 500 Years appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

With the Oval Office looking more like a middle school classroom every day, let’s recall the way, once upon a time, we responded to childhood taunts from a playground bully. You remember how it goes. Your nemesis says mockingly that you’re a this-or-that and you shout back: “Takes one to know one!” Indeed, it does. This month, Microsoft founder Bill Gates said of his fellow billionaire Elon Musk: “The world’s richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world’s poorest children.” Elaborating, Gates explained that Musk, as head of his self-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), had decided to put “U.S.A.I.D. in the wood chipper” by cutting 80% of its global humanitarian programs and that, he pointed out,... Read more