Now that rightwing media has arguably caused more Americans to die than has tobacco, it’s time to consider a strategy like we used with cigarettes to balance their deadly lies and misinformation
Caution: Voting Republican may be hazardous to your health, to your children’s future, towards your retirement, to the water you drink, to the air that you breathe, only you can prevent the destruction of the administrative state, vote blue.
I can’t hardly get proficient enough with technology to do this social media stuff, and post comments. But I thought I would try today. I do try and read most all of yours, Thom and the other subscribers.
Thom Hartmann, you may well be right. Today, just like any other day, when you bring ideas, facts, and hard choices before us listeners and readers.
A strategy would be great, to help us. Help us to believe that hope is still there for us to recuperate. Get the right-wing media out of our faces, out of our ears. And more importantly, out of the faces and ears of our friends, family, and those we may only slightly know who are being poisoned, numbed into complacency, and incited to believe and act in ways that surely are killing us all hour by hour, day by day, week by week, month by month, and so on.
There is a little poem in the new issue of The Atlantic (October) that comes again to my mind. Maybe some of you have read it? It is “Ode to a Squirrel.” The guy writing it, he is asking the yammering chattering little jumping all over the place critter, what’s with you? Why you keep yammering at me? As if the little crazed nut gatherer is trying to convey some urgent message, or doling out a harsh criticism.
I loved that little piece. I read it over and over. We have such a resident in our yard. Just as I imagine that maybe each of us may also.
My silly daydreamer mind inside of me, takes that poem, puts it to this real live squirrel that I know. He seems to delight in jumping tree to tree, just to get closer to me. Last week, he stole a whole bucket of apples we’d picked from our tree. I ask our backyard SQ all of the questions we who listen to Thom Hartmann are all asking ourselves. What can we do to get things back on track?
The Democrats are worried, weary, and have plenty of trouble, reasonably so, in getting a good focus, and a strategy, to combat the campaign of terror, death, disingenuousness, and full bore cruelty. The Democrats are seeing reality, and it scares the Hell out of them. Of course, in this, I do mean, us. And the Republicans are scared, too, but about losing their being mostly a white country, and so on. I think that they see that their strategy to maintain power through obstruction, and rigging the system to take away democratic processes is going well, looking good. And by what I can tell, it seems true. Keep jumping from branches, confusing the opposition. Keep them off balance. Lie when you can, kill by letting the good deeds go undone.
And we want to get them to believe that it is like the tobacco? And maybe they will wake up, and stop listening to the beauty of glamorously deceiving lies on the FOX screens? Okay. Let’s do it. But aw, shucks. How in the Hell we going to do that?
We have to stuff away more nuts for even harder times. And we have to get a few tasers on the guilty ones, to stop the damage. So we can do triage on the wounded, the nearly lost souls who don’t want to hear one freaking word from us anymore.
A certain, warranted, harsh justice must be dealt. And it should strike fear. I am convinced that fear is what will win. After all, is that what is being dealt by the right, really?
Entertainment. Movie. Most citizens are just waiting to see the movie, when the next big thing is done. Just like the new book by Penny and Clinton. Trouble is. Reality is playing out in real time. When the movie is out, we will maybe be too damaged to recognize…
Fight with sureness of what is right. If no observable justice is seen by the insurrection, or by the legalities of this voting rights theft, we won’t convince too many to get the truth of matters.
Let’s have an honest scientific debate. Science can also be very selective on the data it presents and does skew facts to favor its own agenda (and as a consequence do left-wing and progressive media). Thom, I have heard you and others on your program discuss and use psychology. But this science of psychology itself has a flaw that can be traced back to the linguistic semantics of emotions inscribed by Homer’s “Iliad” that has prevailed in literature, religion, politics, philosophy, and law for almost 3000 years. Like the citizens of Plato’s Cave, you and your audience has accepted shadows as reality. My question to you is, can you put on hold the reflexive action of a lifetime of neuro-linguistic programing to properly examine and analyze a different psychology of emotions?
Since, Homer, emotions have been deemed causal to behavior. Current psychological and pharmaceutical therapies are based on the premise that aberrant and dangerous emotions can be and are causal to destructive behavior and therefore these emotions must be controlled, even with the use of pharmaceuticals if necessary. This paradigm is very convenient to current academic research in emotional behavior supported by the pharmaceutical industry and for those who have taught and written about emotions and cognitive behavior therapies throughout their careers. Another paradigm of emotions would be inconvenient and disruptive to the personal and professional lives of many professors in literature, religion, linguistics, philosophy, and law for they would have to reexamine their life work as an academic.
The problem is that the mind has integrated cognition, emotions, and behavior into one cognitive construct where emotions drive behavior. Bottom line is emotions are something a person feels. That is, a person perceives changes in the brain and body that are called emotions. If you diagram this cognitive, emotional, and physical behavior on a flow chart integrating changes within the brain and body, current emotional theory says: emotions (as causal) change the biochemical physiology of the brain and body that drives behavior is then perceived as emotions (as an effect). Thus, emotions become both causal to physiological changes that drives behavior and the effect of these changes at the same time. This cannot be. Emotions can not simultaneously be both the cause of a state of being and the effect of that same state of being.
What does work is that cognition is causal to the biochemical and physiological changes in the brain and body that drives behavior and is perceived as emotions. Cognition is causal to the effect emotion. Emotions are like the “check engine” light on the dashboard of a car. The light says something is wrong within the engine. The light is not the cause of the problem and like emotions, the light is only conveying a condition that left unattended will result in some failure within the system. Another analogy is negative emotions and the pain of a hand on a hot stove. Pain is telling the hand to get off the hot stove. Negative feeling emotions should be telling an individual to get their mind off of the cognitive activities producing the negative emotions or there will be consequences…like depression, mania, suicide and other cognitive-emotional disorders. Obviously, science does not talk about a “burnt hand disease” yet depression and other mental illnesses may just be a “burnt hand disease” where an individual ignores their evolved emotional biofeedback mechanism. But this cannot even be discussed until academia accepts an alternative paradigm to their emotional dysfunction theory. Emotions can not be dysfunctional because they are a perceived effect of cognitive behavior. Cognitive behavior therapies work because cognition, not emotion, is causal to the changes and states of biochemical physiology that drives behavior and is perceived as emotions.
Since I started writing (over a decade ago) to the top psychological research academia in such esteemed institutions as Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, UCLA, MIT, and many others around the world to explain that there is an error within their psychology of emotions, there have been nearly 8.000,000 deaths by suicide worldwide (W.H.O., 2019); millions of other people are being put through a school-to-prison pipeline (LDF, 2018) within conditions of incarceration that only amplify their psychological injuries; indiscriminate “random” shootings, bombings, murder, war and individual dehumanization continues where people and politics have become objects to be controlled, manipulated, and subjugated for the personal greed and satisfaction of a dominate, power-hungry class of tyrants (all vying for economic and political control within a government of their own making). When will our academic institutions review, analyze, and question the psychological environments their teachings foster within all of these atrocities because they are oblivious to emotions’ evolutionary design? The lack of casual and scholarly questioning and review of an erroneous emotional linguistics commonly misused in science and everyday life only add to the misfortune of a children of a lesser god (Medoff, 1979).
My full argument, "Emotions-as-Effect and Emotional Control Theory: The Linguistic Semantics of Emotional vs. Cognitive Dysregulation", Symbiotic Psychology Press (15,500 words) can be freely downloaded as a PDF on emotional-evolution(dot)com.
If philosophy, religion, and law are ignorant of what drives human behavior and decision making, how can there be but laws of ignorance and injustice (and disorder, conflict, and crisis). Justice founded upon falsehood is itself false and unjust.
I think you may have hit on one of the answers, but from what I have seen there are more reasons that result in an anti-vax attitude than the pollution spewed by the psychopaths in right-wing media. My friend that was an RN refuses the vax, because she hates and distrusts big pharma. I have seen quite a bit about the folks that think everything should be done "naturally" jump onto the no-vax wagon. Their idiotic vision of herd immunity from infection is a psychopath's dream. Others simply hate being told what to do and have no regard for their safety or anyone's. Then there are the folks that think everything is in God's hands. It's complicated. It's why a mandate for certain jobs was the only option. Too bad that was not done immediately. From the get-go, it should have been medical personnel, law enforcement, fire personnel, and teachers, no jab---no job.
So many lives could have been saved. Two thirds of the loss in my red county has happened in the last 60 days. Almost every one of those deaths were avoidable. Delta has been hell here, and it isn't done with us yet.
The right-wing media may hate us, but conversely and to their eternal shame, they have no love for their own people.
Caution: Voting Republican may be hazardous to your health, to your children’s future, towards your retirement, to the water you drink, to the air that you breathe, only you can prevent the destruction of the administrative state, vote blue.
I can’t hardly get proficient enough with technology to do this social media stuff, and post comments. But I thought I would try today. I do try and read most all of yours, Thom and the other subscribers.
Thom Hartmann, you may well be right. Today, just like any other day, when you bring ideas, facts, and hard choices before us listeners and readers.
A strategy would be great, to help us. Help us to believe that hope is still there for us to recuperate. Get the right-wing media out of our faces, out of our ears. And more importantly, out of the faces and ears of our friends, family, and those we may only slightly know who are being poisoned, numbed into complacency, and incited to believe and act in ways that surely are killing us all hour by hour, day by day, week by week, month by month, and so on.
There is a little poem in the new issue of The Atlantic (October) that comes again to my mind. Maybe some of you have read it? It is “Ode to a Squirrel.” The guy writing it, he is asking the yammering chattering little jumping all over the place critter, what’s with you? Why you keep yammering at me? As if the little crazed nut gatherer is trying to convey some urgent message, or doling out a harsh criticism.
I loved that little piece. I read it over and over. We have such a resident in our yard. Just as I imagine that maybe each of us may also.
My silly daydreamer mind inside of me, takes that poem, puts it to this real live squirrel that I know. He seems to delight in jumping tree to tree, just to get closer to me. Last week, he stole a whole bucket of apples we’d picked from our tree. I ask our backyard SQ all of the questions we who listen to Thom Hartmann are all asking ourselves. What can we do to get things back on track?
The Democrats are worried, weary, and have plenty of trouble, reasonably so, in getting a good focus, and a strategy, to combat the campaign of terror, death, disingenuousness, and full bore cruelty. The Democrats are seeing reality, and it scares the Hell out of them. Of course, in this, I do mean, us. And the Republicans are scared, too, but about losing their being mostly a white country, and so on. I think that they see that their strategy to maintain power through obstruction, and rigging the system to take away democratic processes is going well, looking good. And by what I can tell, it seems true. Keep jumping from branches, confusing the opposition. Keep them off balance. Lie when you can, kill by letting the good deeds go undone.
And we want to get them to believe that it is like the tobacco? And maybe they will wake up, and stop listening to the beauty of glamorously deceiving lies on the FOX screens? Okay. Let’s do it. But aw, shucks. How in the Hell we going to do that?
We have to stuff away more nuts for even harder times. And we have to get a few tasers on the guilty ones, to stop the damage. So we can do triage on the wounded, the nearly lost souls who don’t want to hear one freaking word from us anymore.
A certain, warranted, harsh justice must be dealt. And it should strike fear. I am convinced that fear is what will win. After all, is that what is being dealt by the right, really?
Entertainment. Movie. Most citizens are just waiting to see the movie, when the next big thing is done. Just like the new book by Penny and Clinton. Trouble is. Reality is playing out in real time. When the movie is out, we will maybe be too damaged to recognize…
Fight with sureness of what is right. If no observable justice is seen by the insurrection, or by the legalities of this voting rights theft, we won’t convince too many to get the truth of matters.
I know. I need an Editor. Thanks for listening.
Let’s have an honest scientific debate. Science can also be very selective on the data it presents and does skew facts to favor its own agenda (and as a consequence do left-wing and progressive media). Thom, I have heard you and others on your program discuss and use psychology. But this science of psychology itself has a flaw that can be traced back to the linguistic semantics of emotions inscribed by Homer’s “Iliad” that has prevailed in literature, religion, politics, philosophy, and law for almost 3000 years. Like the citizens of Plato’s Cave, you and your audience has accepted shadows as reality. My question to you is, can you put on hold the reflexive action of a lifetime of neuro-linguistic programing to properly examine and analyze a different psychology of emotions?
Since, Homer, emotions have been deemed causal to behavior. Current psychological and pharmaceutical therapies are based on the premise that aberrant and dangerous emotions can be and are causal to destructive behavior and therefore these emotions must be controlled, even with the use of pharmaceuticals if necessary. This paradigm is very convenient to current academic research in emotional behavior supported by the pharmaceutical industry and for those who have taught and written about emotions and cognitive behavior therapies throughout their careers. Another paradigm of emotions would be inconvenient and disruptive to the personal and professional lives of many professors in literature, religion, linguistics, philosophy, and law for they would have to reexamine their life work as an academic.
The problem is that the mind has integrated cognition, emotions, and behavior into one cognitive construct where emotions drive behavior. Bottom line is emotions are something a person feels. That is, a person perceives changes in the brain and body that are called emotions. If you diagram this cognitive, emotional, and physical behavior on a flow chart integrating changes within the brain and body, current emotional theory says: emotions (as causal) change the biochemical physiology of the brain and body that drives behavior is then perceived as emotions (as an effect). Thus, emotions become both causal to physiological changes that drives behavior and the effect of these changes at the same time. This cannot be. Emotions can not simultaneously be both the cause of a state of being and the effect of that same state of being.
What does work is that cognition is causal to the biochemical and physiological changes in the brain and body that drives behavior and is perceived as emotions. Cognition is causal to the effect emotion. Emotions are like the “check engine” light on the dashboard of a car. The light says something is wrong within the engine. The light is not the cause of the problem and like emotions, the light is only conveying a condition that left unattended will result in some failure within the system. Another analogy is negative emotions and the pain of a hand on a hot stove. Pain is telling the hand to get off the hot stove. Negative feeling emotions should be telling an individual to get their mind off of the cognitive activities producing the negative emotions or there will be consequences…like depression, mania, suicide and other cognitive-emotional disorders. Obviously, science does not talk about a “burnt hand disease” yet depression and other mental illnesses may just be a “burnt hand disease” where an individual ignores their evolved emotional biofeedback mechanism. But this cannot even be discussed until academia accepts an alternative paradigm to their emotional dysfunction theory. Emotions can not be dysfunctional because they are a perceived effect of cognitive behavior. Cognitive behavior therapies work because cognition, not emotion, is causal to the changes and states of biochemical physiology that drives behavior and is perceived as emotions.
Since I started writing (over a decade ago) to the top psychological research academia in such esteemed institutions as Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, UCLA, MIT, and many others around the world to explain that there is an error within their psychology of emotions, there have been nearly 8.000,000 deaths by suicide worldwide (W.H.O., 2019); millions of other people are being put through a school-to-prison pipeline (LDF, 2018) within conditions of incarceration that only amplify their psychological injuries; indiscriminate “random” shootings, bombings, murder, war and individual dehumanization continues where people and politics have become objects to be controlled, manipulated, and subjugated for the personal greed and satisfaction of a dominate, power-hungry class of tyrants (all vying for economic and political control within a government of their own making). When will our academic institutions review, analyze, and question the psychological environments their teachings foster within all of these atrocities because they are oblivious to emotions’ evolutionary design? The lack of casual and scholarly questioning and review of an erroneous emotional linguistics commonly misused in science and everyday life only add to the misfortune of a children of a lesser god (Medoff, 1979).
My full argument, "Emotions-as-Effect and Emotional Control Theory: The Linguistic Semantics of Emotional vs. Cognitive Dysregulation", Symbiotic Psychology Press (15,500 words) can be freely downloaded as a PDF on emotional-evolution(dot)com.
If philosophy, religion, and law are ignorant of what drives human behavior and decision making, how can there be but laws of ignorance and injustice (and disorder, conflict, and crisis). Justice founded upon falsehood is itself false and unjust.
I think you may have hit on one of the answers, but from what I have seen there are more reasons that result in an anti-vax attitude than the pollution spewed by the psychopaths in right-wing media. My friend that was an RN refuses the vax, because she hates and distrusts big pharma. I have seen quite a bit about the folks that think everything should be done "naturally" jump onto the no-vax wagon. Their idiotic vision of herd immunity from infection is a psychopath's dream. Others simply hate being told what to do and have no regard for their safety or anyone's. Then there are the folks that think everything is in God's hands. It's complicated. It's why a mandate for certain jobs was the only option. Too bad that was not done immediately. From the get-go, it should have been medical personnel, law enforcement, fire personnel, and teachers, no jab---no job.
So many lives could have been saved. Two thirds of the loss in my red county has happened in the last 60 days. Almost every one of those deaths were avoidable. Delta has been hell here, and it isn't done with us yet.
The right-wing media may hate us, but conversely and to their eternal shame, they have no love for their own people.