Author: Thom Hartmann

Expect the gun control debate in America to really get hot over the next 12 months as Beto O’Rourke runs for governor of Texas. O’Rourke said, when running for president in 2019, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47!” And it’s entirely time for this debate. America has just a bit more than 4 percent of the world’s population, but, with more guns than people in our country, we have more than 40 percent of all the guns in civilian hands in the world. Specifically, as a Swiss-based research group found, there are “approximately 857 million...

The Rittenhouse verdict sent a shudder through America as terrorists and vigilantes celebrated: one rightwinger called for wholesale slaughter of Democrats saying on Telegram, “The left won’t stop until their bodies get stacked up like cord wood.” On Facebook, rightwing sites celebrating the verdict were the most popular nationwide by a factor of 9 to 1. The parents of Anthony Huber, who Rittenhouse killed as Huber tried to disarm him, put out a public statement that said, in part: “The verdict means there is no accountability for the person who murdered our son. It sends the unacceptable message that...

Our children are dying from gun violence. So why do Republicans in Congress not give them the same concern we do our police and soldiers, who also face gunfire? Imagine your 5-year-old child singing in school, to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star: Lockdown, Lockdown. Lock the door. Shut the lights off, Say no more. Go behind the desk and hide. Wait until it’s safe inside. And then being stalked by another child, this one with, for example, a Sig Sauer 9 mm semiautomatic weapon designed for warfare. Imagine the call from the hospital or the police telling...

In 1926 Ernest Hemmingway published his novel The Sun Also Rises, which has this extraordinary bit of dialogue about how change happens in most aspects of life, and how governments rise and fall. “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. ”Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.” ”What brought it on?” “Friends,” said Mike. “I had a lot of friends. False friends.” For some unfathomable reason, Democrats insist on calling their Republican colleagues their “friends.” They are not friends. They are systematically destroying American democracy with the clear objective of replacing it with strongman authoritarianism, a new and...