Author: Thom Hartmann

America is rapidly bifurcating, becoming two nations, and one of the main drivers of the process is a federal system that encourages Red states to mooch off Blue states, using essentially stolen tax money to reinvent the old Confederacy, “own the libs,” and wage “war on woke.” Most Red states have become oligarchic white supremacist medieval-like fiefdoms with obscene levels of often multigenerational wealth at the top, extreme poverty at the bottom, and working people, women, and minorities kept in subordinate roles through explicit government and corporate policy. In this, these Red states are following the once-classic European and...

China, Russia, and a handful of rightwing billionaires are trying to tear down our democracy. “Putin Republicans,” aka the MAGA GOP, are trying to help them. For most of the 7,000-year history of modern civilization autocracy has been the default system all over the world, as I lay out in The Hidden History of American Democracy. The past two centuries, however, have featured an ongoing battle for primacy between democracy and autocratic oligarchy. At the time of the Civil War there was only a small handful of democratic nations in the world, and they all held their breath to see...

American families with children, and the American Dream they are trying to live, are about to face a serious crisis. Counterintuitively, the pandemic brought a child-care boon to working families with kids. This was in large part due to the extraordinary efforts of Nancy Pelosi in the House and Bernie Sanders in the Senate, who got billions for expanded childcare funds to families in distress. Although these were technically emergency funds, they were similar to normal, routine programs offered by virtually every other developed country in the world. But when the pandemic was declared officially over, Republicans dug their...

While it may be satisfying to call Trump and his enablers “fascists,” there is a deeper truth here, with which America must come to terms: the Trump/MAGA faction of the GOP has declared war on democracy itself. Funded by rightwing billionaires who, themselves, view democracy as an inconvenient pain-in-the-ass and, when Democrats talk about them “paying their fair share,” an actual threat, these MAGA Republicans have also joined forces with wealthy international elements dedicated to ending democracy all around the world. They are supported by a media machine itself largely created by rightwing billionaires — Murdoch’s Fox “News,” over...

House Republicans have revived the infamous Swiftboat lie strategy that helped defeat John Kerry in 2004. In essence, it involves relentlessly lying about a candidate and smearing his or her name and reputation in the hopes it’ll shave a few points off their popularity with independent voters. While virtually 100 percent of the men who served with Kerry in Vietnam spoke glowingly of his service, a group who did not serve with him made up lies and exaggerations. And the Swiftboat effort was well funded: Clarence Thomas’ sugar daddy Harlan Crow threw big bucks into it in 2004. Kerry and those...