Liberals hate Trump, no question about it. He’s the definition of illiberal: authoritarian, racist, sexist, and downright nasty. Not only that, he’s a living repudiation of the liberal delusion that America runs on meritocracy. But you want to know a dirty, little secret? In back alleys, encrypted group chats, and off-the-record conversations, liberals will still support Trump on a case-by-case basis. Of course, they’d never vote for the guy, but they’ll give two cheers for some of his policies. I discovered this ugly truth during Trump’s last term while writing an article on the shift in U.S. policy toward China from lukewarm engagement to hostile decoupling. The general consensus among the foreign policy elite was that, at least in terms... Read more
Tomgram
In the early 1990s, doctors in Hiroshima, Japan, discovered a stress-induced syndrome they called Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, or “broken heart syndrome” — a condition in which the heart’s left ventricle, responsible for pumping blood, loses its capacity in response to extreme stressors like war, natural disaster, and the loss of loved ones. Prevalent among older women, that acute condition involves heart attack-like symptoms, including chest pain and pressure, light-headedness, and dread. More recently, Israeli doctors in Tel Aviv noted a spike in the condition after the October 7, 2023, attack by the militant group Hamas and Israel’s subsequent incursion into (and devastation of) Gaza in response. The mothers of Israeli soldiers in particular have been affected, as have many who didn’t... Read more
Count on one thing: the next four years are going to be tough. If you can muster the energy for political action while Donald Trump and his minions rule Washington, it will have to be channeled in two ways: first, resisting the worst excesses of him (and his party of billionaires); and second, keeping up the effort to make life truly better for everyone, especially the most vulnerable among us. Or wait. Should it be the other way around? Could a good offense be the best defense? At the moment, it’s a question that’s not getting much attention. It may seem all too obvious right now that resistance has to be the top priority. Who could have been surprised by... Read more
Source: Join the Resistance? Yes, But… appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
Give him credit. As a start, for that first surprise victory in 2016. No, I didn’t fully get it at the time, but I kind of get it now (since, like the rest of us, I’ve lived through it all, including his close loss in 2020). Still, twice? Him? A convicted felon, no less! And yes, I do think italics are all too appropriate under the circumstances. Two times as the president of these increasingly disunited states of America? Holy cowpie! Perspecting (No, That’s Not a Typo) Donald Trump This country actually did it — elected him (again!) — and so we deserve whatever we get, at least a little less than 50% of us do: Fox News… oops, sorry,... Read more
Source: Trumped appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
“I never realized before that men hate us so much.” That was the lesson drawn by one of my fellow organizers in Reno, Nevada, the morning after the 2024 general election. She’d turned 21 during the campaign, a three-month marathon she approached as a daily opportunity to learn as much as she could about everything she encountered. “Of course, they hate immigrants, too,” she added, “and I’m both.” That morning of November 6th, I sat down with her and four other women to face the election results. The six of us had spent almost every day together over the previous three months, recruiting, training, and deploying volunteers in northern Nevada in the campaign to elect Kamala Harris president and return... Read more
Source: Election Aftermath appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
During this year’s presidential election campaign, I was puzzled and increasingly troubled that the issue of truth-telling — and the spectacular lack of it from one candidate — wasn’t getting the sort of focus or emphasis in the news coverage it should have received. We heard or read about Donald Trump’s specific false statements just about every day (because they happened just about every day). But we didn’t often hear about the deeper questions those falsehoods raised and continue to raise: What will it mean to have a president of the United States who has no regard for the truth and often no idea what it is? What will it do to public life if a president’s words can’t be... Read more
Source: Fact-Checker Alert appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
“If they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:31) Before November 5th, millions of us were already struggling with poverty, extreme storms, immigration nightmares, anti-trans bills, criminalized reproductive health, the demolition of homeless encampments, the silencing of freedom of speech on campuses… and, of course, the list only goes on and on. Since Donald Trump and J.D. Vance were elected, more of us find ourselves in a state of fear and trembling, given the reports of transgender people attacked in broad daylight, misogynist social media posts threatening “your body, my choice,” Black college students receiving notes about returning to enslavement, and the unhoused beaten and battered. In the wake of... Read more
Source: Lifting from the Bottom appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
My inbox is full of lament (and encouragement). My Instagram feed is full of anger and “the arc of the moral universe bends slow but…” My Facebook brims with exhortations to focus on the positive, on what we can control, on the next fight. I live in a poor Democratic stronghold in southeastern Connecticut. Kamala Harris won our state by more than 200,000 votes. Our seven paltry electoral votes went blue. Here, Jill Stein got a lot more votes than Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., but nowhere near enough to swing the Nutmeg State red. I didn’t plant a Harris/Walz sign on my front walk. I didn’t knock on doors in Pennsylvania. I didn’t give any money in response to the... Read more
Source: A Final Speech from the Great Disrupter appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
Some 15 years ago, on December 5, 2010, a historian writing for TomDispatch made a prediction that may yet prove prescient. Rejecting the consensus of that moment that U.S. global hegemony would persist to 2040 or 2050, he argued that “the demise of the United States as the global superpower could come… in 2025, just 15 years from now.” To make that forecast, the historian conducted what he called “a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends.” Starting with the global context, he argued that, “faced with a fading superpower,” China, India, Iran, and Russia would all start to “provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace.” At home in the United States, domestic divisions would “widen... Read more
Source: Requiem for an Empire appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
When the election results came in on November 5th, I felt a pain in the pit of my stomach, similar to what I experienced when Ronald Reagan rode to power in 1980, or with George W. Bush’s tainted victory over Al Gore in 2000. After some grieving, the first question that came to my mind was: What will a Trump presidency mean for the movements for peace and social justice? I offer what follows as just one person’s view, knowing that a genuine strategy for coping in this new era will have to be a distinctly collective process. As a start, history offers some inspiration. On issues of war and peace, the trajectory of the Reagan administration suggests how surprising... Read more
Source: Seeds of Resistance appeared first on TomDispatch.com.