Tom Engelhardt (1) (1944–)

The United States of Fear by Tom Engelhardt I think this book consists of series of magazine/newspaper articles published over a period of time in the US.

As a non-US person I found it refreshing to read some intelligent writing about the implications of that undeclared war that the US is pursuing much (I expect) to the ignorance of most Americans due to the partisan nature of the US media.Aside:A couple of years ago I was wandering along a deserted beach here in NZ when I came across a US show more tourist and we had an interesting conversation the gist of which was that they were shocked to be reading in NZ newspapers accounts of the war that were so at odds with what she had been reading in the US. She was basically shocked at how much was NOT being told to the US public.If you want a view of the war from inside the US then I would whole heartedly recommend this book. It is intelligent and readable and re-affirms ones faith that the US public are infinitely more intelligent that their media would have you believe. show less

This is an astonishing effort, remarkable in format and intent. Editor Rick Koppes is on his last legs at a prestigious NYC publishing company heading down the tubes. Chapter by chapter, he tells stories of his background as an SDS follower in the '60s, and the wherebouts of his old friends; extolls his brief marriage to a remarkable writer and editor, short lived but casting such a shadow on his life; meets a paleontologist author at the Museum of Natural History and receives a lesson in show more survival of the most physically attractive. Most passionately, he encounters an author whose father was a critical cog in the Hiroshima wheel and just cannot decide what to do with or for her, and so ends up in her apartment late at night with startling results.

Author Tom Engelhardt was a senior editor. I read about him and his blog, TomDispatch.com, in another novel whose author basically credited him for being the major force behind her writing.

Thoughtful readers will really treasure this. Not for the beach or for the timid. show less

Tom Engelhardt of Tom Dispatch wrote A Nation Unmade by War to offer his explanation of why America is in decline. Rather than accepting complexity, he unites everything under the destructiveness of the neverending wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and where the hell else we’re intervening. It’s true, neverending war is bankrupting us and undercutting the social fabric with failing infrastructure, education, healthcare, and the safety net.

So much is going wrong, rising inequality, a partisan show more rift that functions as a proxy for racial divides with the Republicans embracing open white supremacy and white nationalism, and an election of a corrupt conman though racist appeals.

I struggled to finish as the book became tedious. It’s not just that it is relentlessly pessimistic absent even glimmers of hope, but I don’t believe in a unified theory of failure. Yes, America has given itself over to a faux-patriotism that trades actual service for making a fetish of service. Rather than everyone at risk of going to war, of serving, we buy off our guilt in evading service by “honoring the troops.” Now we have started treating the military like a political class. Generals are filling positions in civilian government as though we were Argentina or Chile thirty years ago. It’s dangerous and Engelhardt is right to remind us that along with the daily outrage fest, a whole lot of other things are going on.

He also thinks the militarization and constant war are responsible for things more logically explained by the persistence of racism and the backlash against a Black president. Also, if the generals were really in charge, they actually believe climate change is a serious global security threat.

It felt like blog posts strung together so it felt repetitive and tedious. I also think if you’re going to hand me 10,000 problems, you have an obligation to offer some solutions, so actions. Otherwise, it’s the road to despair, helplessness, and in the end, apathy.

I received an e-galley of A Nation Unmade by War from the publisher through Edelweiss.

A Nation Unmade by War at Haymarket Books
Tom Engelhardt author site

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2018/07/06/9781608469017/ show less

In The End of Victory Culture, Tom Engelhardt argues that inability of the Korean and Vietnam Wars to fit into the dominant narrative of American culture, coupled with the inability to openly confront the Soviet Union due to the prospect of nuclear war, led to the feeling of malaise that pervaded the Cold War. Engelhardt structures his argument into four sections: War Story, that examines the creation of the victory narrative; Containments, that examines early upsets to the victory show more narrative; The Era of Reversals, which explores the role of the Vietnam War in shattering the dominant narrative; finally, in Afterlife, Engelhardt explores early attempts to reinstate the victory story in popular culture and through limited, highly choreographed military actions in Grenada and Iraq. Engelhardt draws upon the work of Paul Boyer, Elaine Tyler May, and John Dower in discussing the Cold War as well as other historians like James McPherson when he examines the cultural legacy of the Civil War in victory narrative.
In establishing the war narrative as a discursive device, Engelhardt argues, “Triumphalism was in the American grain” (pg. 3-4). The war narrative could not take on an aggressive tone, however. Engelhardt writes, “From its origins, this war story was essentially defensive in nature, and the justness of American acts was certified not only by how many of them died, but by how few of us there were to begin with” (pg. 5). Americans could justify most actions in war as long as they conceived of themselves as underdogs. After World War II, however, “shadowed by the bomb, victory became conceivable only under the most limited of conditions, and an enemy too diffuse to be comfortably located beyond national borders had to be confronted in an un-American spirit of doubt” (pg. 6). This narrative, and its upset, plays a key role in Engelhardt’s insight into the Cold War.
The upset, however, took time to develop. Engelhardt explores both the joint role that the military industrial complex and consumer culture played in upsetting that narrative, writing, “The arms race and the race for the good life were now to be put on the same ‘war’ footing” (pg. 77). The media repackaged the war narrative through film and television and toys for children that sold Americans the narrative in a time of increasing uncertainty. Engelhardt writes, “The United States was involved in a global ‘war,’ yet Americans were militarily unmenaced” (pg. 87). This conflict of ideas spread throughout American culture since, “in 1950s America, the worlds of consumer arcadia and global fear, of twenty-four-hour-a-day television and twenty-four-hour-a-day airborne nuclear-armed bombers coexisted” (pg. 87). Finally, McCarthyism, HUAC, and containment on a global scale obliterated the us-versus-them dichotomy because they “helped transform America’s enemies into beings who looked indistinguishable from ‘us’” (pg. 122).
Writing of the impact of Vietnam on American culture, Engelhardt argues, “Because it was impossible to ‘see’ who had defeated the United States and hence why Americans had lost, it was impossible to grasp what had been lost. So American victimhood, American loss – including the loss of childhood’s cultural forms – became a subject in itself, the only subject, you might say, while the invisibility of the foe who had taken the story away lent that loss a particular aura of unfairness” (pg. 180). Vietnam obliterated the narrative of American certainty without an identifiable enemy. Engelhardt writes, “Vietnam was like an ambush that refused to end and for which no retribution proved satisfying” (pg. 194). Even when Americans could fight back, it was not satisfying. According to Engelhardt, “Victory somehow meant defeat, for to win you had to destroy what you ‘won,’ and to destroy what you won – the villages, towns, and cities of Vietnam, not to speak of its livestock, land, and people – was to ensure the enmity of those in whose name you fought” (pg. 206). This led to atrocities that flipped the script with which American soldiers grew up in the early Cold War of the 1950s. Without a clear explanation for the change that occurred in their cultural narrative, Americans sought desperately for an answer in the late 1970s through the early 1990s.
Engelhardt argues that George Lucas’ Star Wars led the cultural charge against the upset to the victory narrative. He writes, “In deepest space, anything was possible, including returning history to its previous owners. Once again, we could have it all: freedom and victory, captivity and rescue, underdog status and the spectacle of slaughter” (pg. 267). Further, the American military placed the blame for the troubles of Vietnam on the media and carefully orchestrated and choreographed Grenada and Desert Storm in order to prevent the public outcry that accompanied American actions in Indochina. Engelhardt argues, “In the new version of victory culture, the military spent no less time planning to control the screen than the battlefield, and the neutralization of a potentially oppositional media became a war goal” (pg. 290). Despite this choreography, however, the war story no longer offers the comfort it once did when facing the future. show less