Departments

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militarism

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    5/2/2021

    What Kind of Fear Is Stopping Joe Biden?

    by Samuel Moyn

    The course of the Biden administration's policy agenda will be determined by what Democrats are afraid of. In particular, it will matter whether they are more afraid of foreign adversaries or of domestic poverty. 

  • SOURCE: Foreign Policy
    4/16/2021

    Biden Just Made a Historic Break With the Logic of Forever War

    by Stephen Wertheim

    A historian of American interventionism says that Joe Biden's apparent determination to withdraw from Afghanistan is a significant break from recent precedents, and possibly signals a shift away from perpetual war. 

  • SOURCE: TomDispatch
    4/13/2021

    Slaughter Central: The United States as a Mass-Killing Machine

    by Tom Engelhardt

    The American armanents industry is profiting from the sales of weapons of potential planetary destruction, mass shootings, and all manner of violence in between. We should understand the gun industry as a global public-private partnership of death.

  • SOURCE: TomDispatch
    4/4/2021

    “The Greatest Purveyor of Violence in the World”

    by Liz Theoharis

    Martin Luther King's 1967 Riverside Church address pointed out that the cause nonviolent civil rights struggle required him to challenge the US government to end militarism. Today, the pandemic shows that an ethos of nonviolence must include an active approach to end suffering through global cooperation. 

  • SOURCE: TomDispatch
    2/18/2021

    The American Century Ends Early

    by Tom Engelhardt

    The American empire is now visibly in a state of rapid decay, the product of three decades of wasting the "peace dividend" of the end of the Cold War. 

  • 2/14/2021

    Heed the Cornerman's Cry

    by Mike McQuillan

    The failure to heed the warnings of the Kerner Commission in 1968 – of a society divided by racism and inequality – has led to ongoing suffering and a politics of resentment over an ethic of mutual care.

  • 2/14/2021

    King’s Final Book: Both Political Roadmap and Passionate Sermon

    by Fred Zilian

    As Black History Month unfolds amid an atmosphere of crisis and division like that which prevailed in 1968, it's worth revisiting Martin Luther King's publication that year of "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community" – a call for reordering national priorities toward justice through politics and for renewed spiritual and ethical dedication to shared humanity.

  • SOURCE: TomDispatch
    2/11/2021

    Beyond Donald Trump: When Poisons Curdle

    by Andrew Bacevich

    The writer regrets not absorbing the message of MLK's prophetic "Beyond Vietnam" sermon when it was delivered in 1967. But the years since have shown he wasn't alone, and the nation's failure to reflect on the interconnection of racism, materialism and militarism accounts for the dire state of affairs reflected in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. 

  • SOURCE: The Drift
    2/2/2021

    First-Person Shooter Ideology​: The Cultural Contradictions of Call of Duty

    by Daniel Bessner

    "Right now, this one game is teaching millions of young Americans about the epic struggle between their government and the Soviet Union, a century-defining cataclysm that resulted in tens of millions of deaths, reshaped world history, and engendered the ideological struggles that presently bedevil the public sphere." But the lesson is one of cynical resignation to today's state of endless war. 

  • SOURCE: TomDispatch
    1/26/2021

    While America Was Sleeping

    by Alfred McCoy

    As journalist H.L. Mencken predicted back in 1920, America had finally come to the point where “the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

  • SOURCE: American Conservative
    11/11/2020

    The Origins Of U.S. Global Dominance

    by Daniel Larison

    A conservative historian reviews a new book on the history of American interventionism and advocates for reorganizing foreign policy without the imperative to dominate the world. 

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    10/19/2020

    Why Is America the World’s Police? (Review)

    by Sam Lebovic

    A review of Stephen Wertheim's "Tomorrow, The World" concludes the new book shows how American military supremacy moved in a generation from a novel idea to embedded common sense, and demands rethinking the resources spent to maintain it.