Twenty-three years ago, I sat down in Metro Diner on Manhattan’s Upper West Side to pick the brain of an illustrious book editor about an ambitious project. It launched me on a life-changing odyssey.
Not so long after that meeting, I sent Tom Engelhardt a draft of an article for his new website, a listserv-turned-publication bearing his name, TomDispatch. One article turned into two, turned into 20, and on and on. Tom and I would work together for the two decades-plus that followed. On some days, we talked by phone as many as 10 times, discussing authors and article ideas and TD’s trademark introductions. But mostly, the calls were about edits. Tom doesn’t use the “track changes” feature when editing documents, so I would print, read, and mark up a hard copy of an article by Jonathan Schell, Mike Davis, Barbara Ehrenreich, or some other fantastic writer whose work I could scarcely believe I could have a hand in crafting. And then we would polish the piece to a high gleam.
Occasionally, when I would meet Tom for dinner near his home, I would edit a piece on the 1 or 9 train, and we would go about the process in person. It’s been many years since we did so, but I can still see Tom, silhouetted against the warm glow of his computer’s screen in his pleasantly cluttered writer’s garret, overstuffed with books and vintage children’s toys and various tchotchkes from a lifetime in publishing. I can see myself, standing over his right shoulder, directing him to my next edit: “Two ’graphs down, last sentence …”
For years, we worked as fellows of The Nation Institute and its current iteration, Type Media Center, where TomDispatch operated under its good auspices. We reported alongside each other at protest marches in New York City and Washington, D.C., and wrote articles together. Tom edited my books, and I worked on his. We even founded a book imprint together. It was a rather incredible run of collaboration and, by the humble standards of progressive media, dare I say a modest success.
At some point in the midst of all this, Tom told me that I was the only one to whom he could imagine handing over the keys to TomDispatch. I was humbled that he would offer me the chance to take the helm of a publication that not only bore his name but also was, in a very real sense, an extension of himself. I was polite about it but turned him down flat. It wasn’t for me, I said. And, frankly, I couldn’t envision anyone else running the site (which, I might add, he encouraged me to rename NickDispatch). Somewhere along the line, though, I reconsidered and was grateful that Tom said the offer still stood.
Today, our long journey from the corner of Broadway and West 100th Street in 2003 comes full circle as I publish the first piece by Tom Engelhardt at my new iteration of TomDispatch, now a part of The Intercept. If you had told me and Tom then that the bloviating real estate developer — who had just signed on to a 13-episode reality TV series called “The Apprentice” and was dating Slovenian model Melania Knauss — living roughly three miles south of our breakfast spot would today be America’s despotic president, we wouldn’t have believed it. So imagine explaining it to America’s founders, as Tom does in his askance look at the country’s recent semiquincentennial. Hopefully it’s the first of a series of offerings from Tom, whenever he takes a break from his excellent new Substack.
– Nick Turse, editor of TomDispatch
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I Would Have Thought You Mad
We’ve only recently passed the semiquincentennial of the United States of America. Two hundred and fifty years ago, at the moment of its founding, the U.S. was, of course, a slaveocracy. Of its founders, John Adams was essentially an oddball because he owned no slaves. But Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe did own people. So, give our current president Donald J. Trump some credit: At least he isn’t a slaveowner. But that’s about the best that can be said for him.
Once upon a time, if you had described our world to me, I would have thought you mad. Who could have imagined that Americans would reelect the man who shoved aside Montenegro’s Prime Minister Duško Marković in 2017 in what appeared to be an attempt to get to the front of a photo line (because who, in any circumstance, should be photographed more than him)? This is also the same tantrum-prone president who once threw his lunch, ketchup and all, at a White House wall after his attorney general made comments he didn’t like about the 2020 election. The president who, less than two years into his second term, kidnapped Venezuela’s head of state, tried to claim Greenland as the property of the US of A, prepared for a possible future war with Cuba, blown ships out of the water in a never-ending fashion in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, has conducted staggering numbers of airstrikes in Somalia, launched a would-be forever war with Iran (brilliantly crippling the global economy while he was at it), and … well, count on it, in the next two-plus years of Donald Trump’s America, there will surely be all too many more examples of unhinged behavior to cite. Honestly, a decade ago, I would have thought you were kidding.
So, what would those slave-owning Founding Fathers, memorialized on the Fourth of July just past, have thought about Trump? What would they have said about his boorish behavior, his toddler-esque tantrums, and his endless attacks and wars?
Perhaps those founders, were they alive today, would visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago and share a meal with the odd millionaire, billionaire, or trillionaire (although Elon Musk’s trillionaire status only lasted a couple of weeks!) lurking around the club. Or perhaps they would have been spotted on the White House lawn recently with Trump, first lady Melania, and the Trump kids, not to speak of a legion of blood-sport-loving billionaires watching a mixed martial arts spectacle in honor of Trump’s 250th birthday. (Oops, my mistake, Trump is just a youthful 80, which, when — or is it, if? — he finally leaves office, will make him our oldest president ever but hardly the oldest among the almost 200 world leaders of the present moment.)
“A Nation Unmade by War,” by Tom Engelhardt Available at Bookshop.org
Here’s a question that those Founding Fathers might ask about Donald Trump’s America: “What kind of -ocracy is the United States today?” And the answer, of course, would not be a democracy, or even a theocracy (though The Donald does love to be worshipped), but a Trumpocracy: a government of Trump, by Trump, and for Trump; a government dedicated to the enrichment of the president and his cronies. And it’s a vengeful one at that. After all, on Truth Social last year, he reposted an AI-generated video of former President Barack Obama being arrested in the Oval Office (as Trump looks on in glee) before he’s thrown into prison. A Black man seized (in a house built by slave labor, no less) and held in bondage is something of a nod to America’s past — and wouldn’t be unfamiliar to America’s founders.
But honestly, if you were to offer an account of Trump’s America to George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, what would either of them have thought? Can you even imagine their reaction? Their dismay? You found a country and just over 250 years later, you have Donald J. Trump running it into the ground.
Perhaps if the Founding Fathers could do it all again, they might have chosen to remain a colony of the British king, George III (whom Donald Trump makes look remarkably good).
Coming from a largely rural land, the founders would undoubtedly find it interesting that Trump’s long solid support in the heartland finally seems to be on the verge of collapse. But then, so much of his world (and sadly, ours, too) seems to be on the edge of ruin these days.
The founders might wonder if the United States could survive another two and a half years. Or if the world can? If, that is, he doesn’t try to remain in power. After claiming to have won the last three presidential elections, Trump asked an Iowan audience ominously: “Should we do it a fourth time?” (George Washington would no doubt be disturbed, having been committed to a two-term maximum.)
In two and a half years, much less six and a half, Trump is potentially all too capable of taking not just this country but also the planet down with him. And I’m not just thinking about his ability (if that’s faintly the word for it) with allies like Israel to turn parts of this world into hell zones of war. I’m thinking instead about the climate disaster to come (as my city recently hit the 100-degree mark on an early July day) and the president who has called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” and a “green scam,” and is prepared in his own fashion to heat this planet to the boiling point. Now, I’m sweating and, of course, with Donald Trump at the helm of state, it’s only going to get hotter, and hotter, and hotter.
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