Author: Thom Hartmann

Donald Trump has built a cult around himself. This is dangerous to America and dangerous to democracy. Cults of personality in governance are broadly incompatible with democracy. They usually erupt in dictatorships where the Great Leader’s face and sayings are splashed all over public places. Think Mao’s China, Stalin’s USSR, Hitler’s Germany, Kim’s North Korea. On a smaller scale and in a different context, we see how destructive such personality cults can be with the deaths around Jim Jones’ Jonestown, David Koresh’s Branch Davidians, and Charles Manson’s Family. This is what Donald Trump aspires to. Back in 2000, Louise and I visited...

“US News and World Report” published a story about how the fringe has become the mainstream in the Republican Party. The headline of their story said it all: “Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Rises From GOP Fringe to Front.” The backstory here is fascinating and grim. The GOP is no longer a normal political party with a single governing philosophy: instead, it’s become a coalition of interest groups, each seeking its own ends. How did we get here, and where will this crisis of political governance lead America? It all started with the billionaires. Of course, back then they were...

The 1970s were a pivotal decade, and not just because it saw the end of the Vietnam War, the resignation of Nixon, and the death of both the psychedelic hippie movement and the very political (and sometimes violent) SDS. Most consequentially, the 1970s were when the modern-day Republican Party was birthed. Prior to that, the nation had hummed along for 40 years on a top income tax bracket of 91% and a corporate income tax that topped out around 50%. Business leaders ran their companies, which were growing faster than at any time in the history of America, and...

Will we be governed by representatives we elect, or people put in office by angry mobs storming capitols? Nations have to figure out how they are to be governed. Most of recorded history tells the story of kings, popes, priests, lords, and barons who ruled through violence and imposed themselves on their people rather than the people selecting them. Ultimately, as we all learned in high school civics, you can have a government chosen democratically with a free and fair vote or you can have a government chosen through brute force and violence. There really are not any other...

Philosophy matters. And philosophy turned into law matters a lot. Particularly in this brave new world of severe climate change. The Jackson, Mississippi crisis of clean water should not surprise any of us. Like Michigan was when Flint’s water supply was crippled, it is a Republican-controlled state and Republicans will always prioritize tax cuts for the morbidly rich over building or maintaining infrastructure. Even in the face of climate-change-driven flooding. Nine of the ten poorest states in the nation are Red states; that is also no surprise. Republicans, after all, have philosophically opposed both unionization and the minimum wage...

The title of Maggie Haberman’s new book about Donald Trump is “Confidence Man” and, truth be told, Trump has been a con man his entire life. Haberman documents it all in excruciating detail. But when you compare Trump’s cons with the $50 trillion that the GOP has conned out of the American working class and given to the top 1 percent since 1980, Trump looks like a piker. He played his role in that GOP con, of course, setting up the very richest Americans to get more billions of dollars a year in tax breaks for the foreseeable future,...