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When I heard the news that Reagan had won the presidency - the first time - if felt like a gut punch. And I remember thinking, "This is going to be the worst thing that's ever happened to women." Little did I know then that my instinctual thought would come true in so many different and horrific ways. That though we had abortion rights then, but only for 7 years, that they'd be gone 43 years later. I FELT more than understood what he was ushering in. It all came true. When he fired all the air traffic controllers - I was in shock then, too, because I knew what else was coming for the country where I was born. Nothing good. And here we are - trying to try to keep the planet we live on from burning up - with people in charge who don't have a CLUE or any willingness to do the right things. It's scary down here at the bottom, living on Soc Sec only after a long disease took all my hard-won resources away - healthcare in the US does that.

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I wish I didn’t have to use a heart symbol to indicate that I agree with you, Dana Bennett. I knew also that Reagan’s election did not bode well for the country. When he was re-elected in 1984, I lowered my flag to half staff. Like you, I FELT more than understood what he was ushering in. Reagan was enthusiastically supported by Jesse Helms, senator from NC, a hateful, bigoted SOB if there ever was one. Now most Republicans are cut from Jesse’s piece of cloth, especially the political class. Criminal fraudsters like Rick Scott become governors and senators when they ought to be in jail. The greedy death party is trying to kill us all. The Republican political party cannot die soon enough.

Thank you, Thom Hartman for articulating what I knew all along to be the truth.

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Thanks, JennSH for replying. I didn’t know Jesse Helms supported him - yes he was awful and so are all the rest of the Republicans. I’m from Florida left there nearly 40 years ago now - in Colorado. But I know ALL about Rick Scott who also STOLE that senate seat from Bill Nelson, a longtime Democrat who helped so many people personally throughout the state for a very long time. And now DeSantis is scaring everyone - with a brain - that he’ll run for president. I’m trying to do everything I can think of to get more Dems to show up and vote. We have so much at stake now.

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Jul 29, 2022Liked by Thom Hartmann

I would like to add that he mainstreamed having contempt and anger towards any American whom conservatives deemed unworthy, uppity, demanding, or who refused to submit to their values and doctrines. The cruelty and anger directed towards those who don't comply with their values started with him, and is seen everywhere today.

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It is mind boggling.

Thanks to our distorted media, electoral system, and corporate/billionaire involvement in our politics, our difficulties are.not surprising.

Many people who voted for these reprehensible politicians are the ones most hurt most by them.

It's all too ‘left brain’

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matter_with_Things

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Another great piece. I will just add a reminder that Ayn Rand was the guiding anti-government voice behind Friedman's neoliberalism. Alan Greenspan was in Ayn Rand's inner circle. Paul Ryan required his staff to read Ayn Rand's novels. It's a cult that justifies "greed is good" and their "faith" in the private sector, and their demonization of government as equivalent to communism.

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Ayn seems to me to have been a truly evil person. I once endured a reverential reading of a passage at an "investment conference," and I remember thinking, as a retired Public Defender: "Wow. That sounds like one of my clients bellyaching about getting caught!" But the amorality is eternal: see Gustavus Myers "History of the Great American Fortunes." Ayn didn't invent the strange (to many of us) obliviousness to harm to victims. Certainly, Donald T. is the apotheosis of the type. The crime wave emanating from T.'s White House has a lot to do with lacking the instinct to perceive what crime is. Just doesn't make sense to him or Ayn. If not born into privilege, Donald would have been Bill Sykes, and never even knowing what the problem was.

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" Ayn didn't invent the strange (to many of us) obliviousness to harm to victims. " Sad but true.

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Jul 29, 2022Liked by Thom Hartmann

Truth. Every. Single. Word.

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"Right-wing authoritarian," "strict-father" values have again replaced the "egalitarian American values" of too many Americans. This happened before our Civil War and before the Great Depression. Those who favor this extreme set of beliefs are back in power. Our systems have failed to keep their power in check.

Here is what I've learned from John Dean and George Lakoff about the persistent extreme values that are easily nurtured on America's political right:

- They believe in an imaginary social hierarchy, with people like them at the top and all others ranked according to manufactured racial, sexual, social, and economic differences. “So they reached out to the white racists, which got them another dozen or so percentage points. The homophobes added even more people to their coalition. Toss in the gun freaks and forced birth crowd and you have enough — with the help of massive cash infusions from fossil fuel billionaires — to win elections and further deconstruct the America built by the Roosevelts, Eisenhower, and Lyndon Johnson.”

- They believe all humans are born evil - original sin.

- These core values lead to:

- Severe punishment to rid us of our 'innate' evil and to maintain their imaginary hierarchy. To that end, they will start dramatic physical punishment of their children as early as 18 months of age, they will eliminate any public programs that could raise the hierarchical ranking of those not like them, they will resort to war to dominate our evil enemies.

- Greed maintains their hierarchical rankings. Only those at the top deserve government welfare like tax cuts and corporate subsidies. As you said, "The only function of government, in their minds, should be to help the greediest in America make a buck."

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Only you left out the part about the eternal punishment of Eve and all her daughters forever, especially singled out for God's hatred. Note that Roe has been shielding MEN, (below a certain socio-economic status!) from responsibility. Hierarchy coming home to roost again. Suddenly guys walking away whistling will have somebody knocking on their doors to pay, and pay, for 18 years, and it might even be cops to arrest him because he's not making his payments to reimburse the County for welfare. Guys will be reported for rape who never were before. But only the guys who can't afford to help wife, daughter, mistress "take care of it." I predict "shotgun abortions." Look out for the statistics on "missing" women.

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Jul 29, 2022Liked by Thom Hartmann

Excellent points. We need to repeat this message as much as possible!

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This comment should be required reading for everyone, it is right on.

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What sends me seeing stars is how schizophrenic it is that Republicans support the sacredness of life when it’s just a few cells with no sentience, yet also support the death penalty. But is there a faint wave of wake-up coming in where people are getting how they are being had?

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RE: Can we return to progressive values of equal protection and empowerment of all citizens?

Here's a less optomistic outlook for stopping this third attempt by the oligarchs, via the GQP, to end our democracy:

"The truth is that American democracy is essentially broken beyond fixing and is unable to withstand a right-wing populist movement determined to destroy it. The Eisenhower wing of the GOP was rooted out long ago. It will take multiple miracles to avoid getting one or more of the “bad” endings in this Choose Your Own Adventure of dystopias. The best realistic case resembles a Jim Crow America from the 1920s, complete with a Gilded Age, mass migration, violent militias running amok, and no-go zones for minorities. The possibilities only go downhill from there into secession, fascism, and civil war."

" ... the GOP has settled on a strategy that it must take the wheel away from voters and steer the country with or without the consent of the governed."

"The increasingly right-wing Supreme Court has stepped aside and allowed the de-democratization of large swathes of the U.S., by negating the enforcement mechanisms of the Voting Rights Act ...".

"The GOP isn’t even bothering to hide its goals to seize permanent minoritarian power anymore. Republican candidates for various state offices in all the swing states are promising to deliver their Electoral College votes to the GOP presidential nominee in 2024, regardless of whom people in the state cast their ballots for."

"Republicans’ brazenness can be attributed to the knowledge that there is a vanishingly small chance Democrats can prevent them from achieving their goals."

"Should the Supreme Court embrace the independent state legislature theory, it in effect means that gerrymandered state legislatures in battleground states like North Carolina, Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan, and Florida will have the ability to overturn elections whenever they dislike the outcome. This represents the end of any hope for free and fair elections in the U.S.: The GOP will control the White House in perpetuity regardless of how people vote in 2022 or 2024."

But there are still, difficult, steps, that could stop our demise:

"To prevent the GOP from capturing the U.S. the way Orbán and the Fidesz Party did Hungary is going to require several miracles in a row: having a history-and-poll-defying 2022 election, then being willing to overturn the filibuster, then getting lucky with an opening on the Supreme Court and a GOP that never regains its footing or suddenly decides to abandon its quest while at the cusp of victory."

https://newrepublic.com/article/167100/republican-party-turning-america-into-hungary

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And observe the hypocrisy, gas-lighting, crazy-making that enables the process. We are on our way through the looking-glass, folks. Hold on.

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The top of the GOP pyramid is filled with wealthy “ be my greed is good” oligarchs who have convinced the base of their pyramid, mostly white-working class folks, that the “Dems” or the “Libs” are out to take what they got.

A massive misdirection.

Classic slight of hand.

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Another good article from Thom, but...................a lot of the death cult voters remain immersed in fantasy. Many of my relatives are ANP worshippers. The only change I see in ANY of them is they are adding lies about being oppressed.

It's the usual ANP logic, they believe it's fine for them to cheat, help from the Kremlin doesn't matter as long as it helps them win, and they want to block votes for the democratic party because they assume everyone is as crooked as they are.

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You ask Why? The bigger picture is that the U.S. of A. has seen its heyday - the 2nd half of the 20th century you were at your peak. It's a long, gradual downhill descent. There's no returning to those glory days. The structure of your nation has changed too much; you're no longer the "Christian" nation founded 240 years ago; you no longer have a President whose authority is unquestioned, nor do you have a single individual like the Rev. Billy Graham who represents, and prays for, your nation and your President.

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Big "Yes!" to the heyday, but are you really extolling Christian Nation and unquestioned President and Billy Graham providing cover for the greed? Maybe I misunderstood.

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Not really. Just observing that that period in history is gone. It had its place and played its role in history. Historians will give some sort of detailed record. I don't limit the decline to the U.S. of A. either - I'm get the feeling that the human race has seen its heyday, and is now in a long, gradual decline. Perhaps this is why Musk is looking at Mars and Bezos at the Moon? They know something we don't?

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(Thank you for proving mine ...over and over. "Rhetoric" is in the eye of the beholder.)

What's it gonna take?

Four years in power (never mind seven years of sheer, babbling lunacy since that fateful ride down that fake golden elevator):

Thirty thousand, nonstop, on-record, flat-out, bald-faced lies by the supreme leader of the Republican Party to the American people, leading directly to the end of 246 years of American-style democracy -- a big joke on the many, a big laugh for the few.

Floods, fires, and famine. Extremely stupid, myopic, self-centered attitudes, initiatives, and policies that only hurt the planet and all living things, leading directly to a nightmarish dystopia on a barely inhabitable planet, dwarfing all other human-caused challenges of existence.

And then manna from hell:

The J-6 committee truth telling of an all-hands-on-deck coup plot and violent insurrection -- to this day, gleefully endorsed by the majority of the rank-and-file, Christo-fascist, I-hate-everybody-who-ain't-me-and-mine, white-nationalist clowns wearing gaudy flags, spewing false religion, screaming fake patriotism. The Republican base.

A "Supreme Court" star chamber of six robed high-priests plotting in secret their own insidious coup overthrowing secular democracy in favor of a bastardized theological plutocracy/kakistocracy -- cruelly relegating half the population to second-class status whose bodies are now owned by and subject to the whims of mostly creepy old white men (along with a few submissive, brow-beaten women zealots) occupying state legislatures and governorships in forever red states in a disunited United States.

Gun violence and mass shootings day and night across every corner of the land where under-funded, undiagnosed crazy people roaming around our city streets have easier access in too many cases to truly barbaric weapons of war than do our own soldiers in combat fighting all the other corporate wars continuously raging across the planet.

(Which brings to mind the latest veteran's bill that the Republicans proudly voted against out of nothing but pure spite and cruelty.)

Then, of course, the big one: Massive election fraud perpetrated against active and potential Democratic voters. Flood social media with lies about voter fraud. Purge the registration rolls. Make it hard to vote by mail. Make it hard to vote in person. Take away outside accountability for gerrymandering, counting, and certifying legitimate votes. Leave all things voting, counting, certifying -- the beating heart of democracy -- to the tender mercies of highly partisan religious fanatics groomed by the worst elements of the corporate/political revolving door of power and greed.

What's it gonna take to bring Americans to the polls in November in large enough numbers to reject the Republican Party at every level of government if not the brutal reality of their shocking agenda, eroding the ground beneath our feet?

Our multi-racial, multi-cultural nation of immigrants miraculously created a fledging people's democracy despite the slow-motion genocide against not only the imported slaves from Africa and slave laborers from the Orient but also the native Americans inhabiting the land that the white settlers arbitrarily declared as their own ...at the point of a gun.

Now their own children are being gunned down in schools and churches -- their tiny bodies splattered all over the walls -- while their authorities fight for the rights of gun manufacturers on Wall Street and unwanted empty vessels in the womb, whom they want to force to fruition as unwanted lives in an uncaring world of Republican under-funded social safety nets for the poor and disadvantaged -- grist for the greed machine, fodder for the war machine. How cruel is their god?

No! It's how cruel THEY are!

What's it gonna take, America? The Republicans are telling us who they are and what they have to offer -- with the Klieg lights on! Forgodsake, believe them in this if nothing else.

Historical trends be damned! If the Democratic Party can't make hey and rile their base this November with such a huuuge basket of deplorable gifts from the opposition, then nothing will. And our democracy is a failed experiment.

"So long, and thanks for all the fish."

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Thank you for proving my point.

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I'm probably going to hell in every religion, but science doesn't give a fck what you believe with zero evidence. Even Jesus would slap the shit out of you.

(bumper stickers)

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