Author: Thom Hartmann

Ukraine under siege: Why a war against one is a war against all

Cities across Ukraine are under siege as you read these words. Families gathering their most precious goods, trying to calm their terrified children, desperate to flee but unsure where to go. Americans have no memory of what it is like to have their own towns shelled, to have their homes blown apart, to see family members die and bodies in the streets as brutal men in uniform spread terror, death, and destruction. The last time an American city was under bombardment from a foreign power was the War of 1812. On August 22, 1814, President James Madison, “the father of...

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Politics stop at the water’s edge: It matters when a democracy like Ukraine is taken down by an autocracy

Unsurprisingly, alleged career criminal Donald Trump has come out in support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “I went in yesterday and there was a television screen,” Trump told a rightwing talk show, “and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper.” Donald Trump, you will remember, was first impeached because the very day Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy turned down his request to manufacture dirt on candidate Joe...

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The Big Grift: Why Americans are becoming increasingly exhausted and sickened by a political Death Cult

While Republican successes in blocking legislation, judges, and even presidential nominations may seem like the Party is on a roll, the reality is that the GOP is in the midst of an existential crisis as severe as any party has seen since the Whigs died out in the early 19th century. Billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal is now openly calling them out in an editorial from the publication’s editorial board itself: “The United States desperately needs a Republican Party that is a sane alternative to the ruling Democrats who have lurched to the coercive left. On that score,...

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Why the next Republican president can become a dictator if Trump is not prosecuted for his crimes

“Precedent” sounds boring and wonky. In reality, it is the way past criminal Republican presidents have taught those who followed them to break the law. This is the shocking story of how Republican presidents taught each other to break the law, and how if Trump is not prosecuted the next Republican president will try to end democracy in the United States of America. Trump has broken multiple past presidential precedents and established entirely new ones that — unless they are punished and outlawed — provide a template for the next Republican president who wants to turn America into a...

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Political Bibliophobia: Why a fabricated “moral panic” over CRT transformed into a book-banning hysteria

The moral panic currently sweeping America about Critical Race Theory (CRT) has been covered ad nauseum by the press and commentators across the political spectrum. What nobody is talking about, though, is the why of this particular issue at this particular time. As a result, we are mistaking the tool for the goal. Moral panics, when driven by politicians, are usually just tools. This CRT moral panic is a tool being used by a coalition of interests to achieve their own goals, none of which have anything to do with teaching or not-teaching the history of race in America....

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A War on Reality: The shocking things Trumpublicans believe

With the Republican Party turning to Trumpism, and the Democratic Party returning to their progressive roots, will we have an honest debate this election year in our media? “What you see is what you get” is an old cliche, but it has endured all these centuries because there was so much truth in it. “Don’t listen to what people say, instead look at what they do” is another truism we can apply to inform us about today’s politics. The past forty years have seen three Republican and three Democratic presidencies, and the modern priorities and values of each Party...

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