The work of our day is to restore the idea of America — an egalitarian democratic republic — and then help it realize its full potential after all these many long years…
Your patriotism, Thom, is on full display with each of your writings. You have devoted your life to the idea of America as put forth in our founding documents. You have served your purpose admirably, and your readers are truly grateful. 🙏🏼
Thom, near the end here you said, "To accomplish their remaking of America from a patriotic nation into a “homeland” of fear and hate, Republicans are taking several steps."
Well, Rachel Maddow overnight posted a video that is creating a firestorm, and which added detail to your "several steps":
Maddow points out frightening truth about Trump's lack of concern about votes:
Maddow's video is making me believe there is a second BIG reason Biden passing the torch to Harris was very important. -He now can focus on this looming second coup attempt, rather than be campaigning.
Forewarned is forearmed. Trump and GOP are making it very clear about what they intend to do. The question is, what are the Dem's going to do about it.
Mr. Monett, in view of Maddow's comments it is probable that, for the first and last time in this nation's history; a genuine election shall be thwarted and the loser shall be made the winner by openly cheating. If this probable, impending cheating is successful; the U.S. will become a dictatorship. And it seems it shall happen right before our eyes, similar to the way it happened to the Reichstag when Hitler and the Nazis took control of it.
One would hope you are correct: Biden and his administration are taking steps to thwart this takeover. But I doubt it. The Democratic Party has been asleep at the wheel since Ronald Reagan. Furthermore, some Democrats have actually been in cahoots with Republicans. I believe the Democrats shall win the election in the sense that they shall receive more votes. But they shall lose the election in the more meaningful sense that it shall be stolen from them in plain sight.
Those Enlightenment theorists were wrong when they said [according to Mr. Hartmann] "that ideas could transform societies." Ideas do not transform societies. Societies transform and create ideas. The violence, death and destruction of the colonial revolt which we incorrectly refer to as the Revolutionary War and the violence death and destruction of the War Between The States created those words of Jefferson and Lincoln respectively. Those high minded words applied to white males in a society which had an economy based on chattel slavery. The contradiction should be obvious. Black people were left out. Lincoln did indeed announce the Emancipation Proclamation. But it came late in the war. This should be a clue. It was true that there were some notable people who were opposed to slavery for purely moral reasons. But they did not hold positions of power in the national government of the North.
The Northern economy was based primarily on industrial machines while the Southern economy was based primarily on the human muscle power of slaves. Machines are more productive of power than human beings. Machines produce more energy per worker, per unit of time than human muscles are capable of. The Northern and Southern economic systems were in competition with one another for raw materials, labor and markets. The Northern system grossly out produced the Southern one and eventually replaced it through the horror of war. The out come of the war was inevitable. That outcome was part of a much broader, older movement of the social Order. It is this:
Each succeeding generation of the Social Order produces more energy per capita than the preceding Order. Never does this process reverse itself. This process is part of the process we call Evolution, both biological evolution and social evolution.
I repeat, ideas do not change the Social Order. Quite the opposite; the Social Order creates, shapes, and changes ideas. Ideas are a superstructure built on top of the Social Order, especially the economic system. And all of it is effected by the efficiency with which energy is produced. Socially this process can be traced from our earliest Hunter Gatherers to the present. Biologically this process can be traced from the first appearance of life on Earth billions of years ago to today.
Thanks for this summary. The whole FDR New Deal probably would never have occurred if blacks were included from the beginning in the 1930s. In spite of that awful fact, it did create a new "Social Order" that was not significantly eroded for almost fifty years, and has not yet been fully destroyed. The ideas created, shaped and changed by the New Deal Social Order they hope to kill completely as their first target. Then they will continue to reverse whatever Social Order we had after the Civil War, and after the colonial revolt.
Mr. Monett, thank you for your thoughtful reply. I agree with you as you say "it did create a new 'Social Order' that was not significantly eroded for almost fifty years, and has not yet been fully destroyed." The Old Order is, I believe at an inflection point right now. I am not well informed enough nor imaginative enough to see what the new Order might be. But there are barely discernible outlines and I can see that the U.S. is following the same steps which the Iberian Empire, French Empire and British Empire trod as they collapsed. These events are easy to trace in secondary historical accounts. I am not an Historian, so I do not analyze original sources. That is not my field.
SO grateful you passed this on! I saw it broadcast, and it's stunning! They think they have it "in the bag" because they own a few fanatics in a few counties! Yes, that's COUNTIES, folks. Let's summarize: if a county doesn't certify its election to the State, the State can't complete certification. You got it from there.
Thank you for laying out the distinctions between patriotism and nationalism. And Hannah Arendt has come to mind more often in the last few years than the previous couple of decades.
Thom, in this single column, you present for any rational person why the ONLY choice in November is to vote blue for every office. Because every red candidate in the cult that used to be the Republican Party opposes all that makes this country what it is. A set of ideas and ideals, not an exclusionary, arrogant, ignorant tribe linked to a chunk of ground. That makes this election the most existential event in our history since the Civil War. Maybe even since the adoption of the Constitution. We cannot lose it, or we will cease to be a country worth keeping.
I’ve been thinking recently about the enlightenment and the ideas of liberty, equality, fraternity. And what we need now is a “new enlightenment.” Maybe we need to counter project 2025 with a “manifesto for a new enlightenment” where we outline what a truly enlightened society would look like, and steps toward achieving it.
could draw from the words of Socrates as revealed in Plato’s Republic. The four great virtues are wisdom , courage , discipline ( self control) and justice . And we cannot expect to find justice in a community in which one class has all the advantages, and the other class all the disadvantages.
The tricky thing with liberty, equality, fraternity is that it was entirely solipsistic among white men. The "fraternity" part probably meant Masons to them. These "high-minded" men had no concept of a female being human enough to be a witness in court. (Witness, mind you: juror or judge? Unimaginable!) I wonder if there isn't a literature as you describe for the future? Marianne Williamson? The intensity with which she was dismissed as a crackpot almost could be suspected as a hallmark of terrifying, unthinkable possibility. I'm having a senior moment about a couple of titles in my library..... You have the right idea. But you are not the first....
Wow! It came to me enough to get it! : "The Aquarian Conspiracy," Marilyn Ferguson. Recommend from an old baby-boomer idealist Green Party Pioneer and take a look at what we set up as a serious plan and process back in the day! How are the original "Ten Key Values" not a "manifesto for a new enlightenment?"
What are the Ten Key Values?" Google doesn't know.
It would be great to have a modern day book that fit together a next wave of being. There are utopia-oriented projects with laundry lists of virtues, but no grabber that's gotten under all our skins.
Here's the Values: Ecological Wisdom, Personal and Social Responsibility, Grassroots Democracy, Nonviolence, Decentralization, Community-based Economics, Post-Patriarchal Values, Respect for Diversity, Global Responsibility, and Future Focus....
Local Green groups around the country eventually made slight changes to the exact wording of the Ten Key Values. The most common modifications were changing Post-Patriarchal Values to Feminism and/or Gender Equity; adding “Personal” to Social Responsibility (Personal and Social Responsibility); and adding Sustainability to Future Focus (Future Focus and Sustainability).
Me, I liked "post-patriarchal"
I consider it a highlight of my life to have attended the inaugural convention in Sacramento when The Green Party made the ballot!
This article by Thom Hartmann blew my mind, because it echoed something I wrote to my local paper back in 2018, when it still published letters from us locals of no importance. I even quoted Macron, that patriotism is "exactly the opposite of nationalism". I described nationalism then as putrefied patriotism, and a simmering potage of misanthropy. I stand by my words.
Actually most of the founders were Masons. The language and symbols are mostly Masonic. As president, Washington, was also leader of his lodge. https://gwmemorial.org/ 21 signers of the Declaration of Independence and at least 13 signers of the Constitution were Masons.
"Civil religion" emphasized freedom, free enterprise, and a limited role for the state. The natural rights philosophy of a "higher law" was also central to the thinking of American patriots, who believed that individuals joined together to create government while surrendering certain rights for the benefit of all. However, they also believed that certain inalienable rights could not be surrendered and that the government was bound to protect them. [I got this from the internet, but I got the same stuff from Demolay, the "builders" when I was a kid.]
Another great essay. Thank you, Thom, for your devotion to your country.
Violence and repression of women and children (and by extension, "lesser" males) are core values within the traditional nuclear family. I am not inferring all families, but traditionally, the father had an unquestioned right to beat the rest of them into submission (or even death) and, historically and almost universally, did so. Nationalism is an extension of this traditional, hierarchical family and it is no surprise it relies on violence and repression. "Homeland" is the expression of this hierarchy writ large across a nation. Hitler was likewise raised in such an environment.
Vance came from a traditional family structure where there was substance abuse and much violence in a culture of male white supremacy and religious patriarchy. I have no doubt he was whipped with belts and other implements. Conservatives never want to talk about their brutal child raising tactics other than to defend "spanking," which is just a word created to justify hitting or whipping a child, as if its not that big of a deal. A parent can legally to do to a child, 10%-20% of their own size, what would get that same person jailed for years if they did it to another adult OF their own size. Let that sink in. Conservatives and religious fundamentalist hysterically (and legally) defend these practices as religious freedom, a facade. Corporal punishment of helpless children has always been a religious/conservative tool of control, if not the primary tool; almost every religious cult whips its children and ignores domestic abuse against the wives. Even those supposedly gentle Amish have been caught out at it. Hence, MAGA supports violence, as they often say, to "get this country under control."
I grew up in Kansas and was both subjected to this and watched as pretty much everyone else in my sphere was treated likewise. They were MAGA before MAGA. It rolled downhill; dad hit mom, mom whipped the kids, kids would be mean to younger kids and animals. I spent decades learning to control my own urge to control everything and everyone around me; I never used violence; manipulation was my jam. To be honest, this simply wasn't an option, as I was a very small woman and I loved animals, often my only comfort. I'd like to think I've come a long way in this regard. And, having suffering corporal abuse as a child, I made a decision not to hit my own kids.
Trump's father was known to hit him with fists, often in the face, throw him against walls and berate him emotionally and intellectually. Fred ruled the family with an iron fist. "A baby is born into a family where he’s ignored by his father. When he does receive his father’s attention, his father constantly yells at, criticizes or punishes him. For the first two years of his life, this child’s mother is perfunctorily attentive, but not loving, and then abandons him for a year. From the time he was born until he is an adult, he witnesses his father abuse his older brother by terrorizing him verbally. This leads to his older brother becoming an alcoholic and dying at the age of 42. He sees his parents engaged in an emotionally neglectful, if not emotionally abusive, marriage." https://www.pacesconnection.com/blog/donald-trump-is-the-product-of-abuse-and-neglect-his-story-is-common-even-for-the-powerful-and-wealthy
Adults abused as children want control because their childhoods were out of control. And they want to control others in ways they could not when they were children. I had a conservative male friend tell me, "I just wish everyone would follow all the rules." That the rules were arbitrary and favored a select few wasn't an issue of concern for him. Rules created a predictability lacking in his upbringing. This is NOT exclusive to white people.
The urge to nationalism is just an extension of the urge to control. I would suspect that 99% of MAGA were hit as children; they share this distinction with almost every person in prison, belying the idea it is required to make children into good people. It is, rather, a desire to make children into submissive people. We can't vote child abuse, or the resulting desire for nationalism, out of our system; we have to end it and that starts with making corporal punishment illegal. This will take generations, especially if we regress. But the fight is a good one; like planting a tree that won't reach full growth in this lifetime.
With all the economic and social depressions and boom cycles and global warming and overpopulation and neglect, and divorces..... The family unit concept offers very little stability to most people. Only when children are raised where all their needs are met and they are not beat, can the human race evolve. No religion, racism or child abuse in the human growing centers! IMHO But with plenty of toys fields, playgrounds and fun and attention!
Your post touches me, as I was whipped with belt by dad, (on Mom's orders) and knew to fear my grandfather's razor strop hanging on the door when visiting grandparents. (didn't happen, that I remember, but funny how the sight of that leather lingers in memory.) What lingers so strongly isn't the punishment itself: it's the memory of injustice! What still stings is that I DID NOT DESERVE IT! (Whatever it was about.) I speculate that the main reason I am sharing with Thom's people is a chip on my shoulder about fairness and justice.
Every time I open up about being whipped, I get a rush of openness from others who share similar memories. I, too, was whipped for reasons that were ridiculous - mostly because my parents were frustrated in their own lives, I think. One of the most brutal was because I had asked for a dime to get a plastic ring out of a vending machine and then accidentally dropped it through the large central heating vent when we got home. I was about six years old and my mother was livid. I could give at least a dozen examples of this sort of thing. There is a weird sexuality around a lot of this. Type "spanking" into google and there are about 282,000,000 hits. That does not include whipping or other euphemisms. That should tell us something.
Having read the bible (twice) and reading parts of it through the years. Donald J Trump is the very definition of the antiChrist.
The Christians once salivated and ripped their shirts when they saw 666. A news letter I received in the mail back in the 1980's was peppered with "proof" of the anti Christ, even a picture of an Abrams Tank with the serial number 666.
And yet Jared Kushner owns a property 666 Park Place in NY, and not a freaking word from the "righteous Christians".
I don't like to use the acronym LOL, as I consider it immature, but I can't think of a better way to express my impression when I read the end of your next to last sentence, about mufti's and evil eye. There is such a thing in the Arab and gypsy world., Italian too.
By the way, when I was in Panama I married a Panamanian and had to (pretend) to convert to Catholicism because she wanted to marry the church of the golden altar (St Josephs, its alter was gold, painted black, to thwart the pirate Henry Morgan. As a consequence I wound up hosting, for dinner, apriest, who said that he was an exorcist, he must have noticed my eye roll, for the conversation turned steeley afterwards
Mr. Hartmann, you are well aware of my admiration for you and I fully understand, and respect, the spirit in which you have so masterfully articulated yourself in this article. Nonetheless, as a Black Man in the United States I trust you understand that we live an existence in which the European-American, whether he/she is cognizant of it or not, is constantly talking above and around us. You begin your piece speaking of Abraham Lincoln:
"President Abraham Lincoln, who steered America to victory against the white Christian nationalist Confederate movement, made clear his embrace of patriotism — loyalty to the idea of America — and his rejection of white Christian nationalism in his Gettysburg Address: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. …"
However, From Lincoln's Speech, Sept. 18, 1858 he states: "I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races -- that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making VOTERS or jurors of negroes, NOR OF QUALIFYING THEM HOLD OFFICE, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
Ergo, your assertion that JD Vance and the MAGA GOP Do Not Represent the True Idea of America & Our Core Values may be true from your standpoint but, from where I sit, they very much represent "core" values. Perhaps that is why Donald "Agent Orange" Trump received over 70% of the "white vote." Because, if he did not represent the "values" how is it that he is even a candidate, let alone a former president and possibly a future one?
If the Republicans had not spent the last forty years tearing down the public education system, more people might understand the principles discussed in this article.
Every time I read one of your essays I want to run out in the street and scream at the top of my lungs! “Wake up! You’re killing America, you damn idiots! What is wrong with you?” So much is wrong that it’s so damn easy to lose heart. If the fascists win in November all is lost.
Hello Tom, I have been a longtime admirer of your shows on the old XM and now SiriusXM, in-fact, you were the inspiration for me installing my first XM radio in my van back in 2003, for those long trips from my home in Fort Washinton MD. to Oklahoma. I am still posting your articles on face book, but they are sectioning me and cutting off some functions to my account, X, has totally blocked my account but I will continue to post your articles and other members of the sub stack until face book cuts me off too.
Labels are powerful things as they can change how people think about things. When the grotesquely named USA PATRIOT Act ("Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to. Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism") created our own internal national police system, I knew we were in trouble. The authors of that act—which they undoubtedly had in the wings for years, just waiting for an excuse—were clever too, combining “patriotism” with the H-word. Then this Cabinet level department was largely replicated in every state, with incredible amounts of money sloshing around, thus guaranteeing that it is too big to control. Whether any of this works better than, say, the “War on Drugs” or how much is spent on “Defense” isn’t even a question, despite obvious and continuing failures. After all, “the people” are being given “protection.”
Exactly Bob, which is why I said the "H-word". I'm sure the TV show using the same title help cement the term too, not that it needed much help by then (2010). A child's version of "Night Before Christmas" that my grandson had was taken from the point of view of NORAD and had a general being poetical about "protecting the Homeland." That made my skin crawl.
Your patriotism, Thom, is on full display with each of your writings. You have devoted your life to the idea of America as put forth in our founding documents. You have served your purpose admirably, and your readers are truly grateful. 🙏🏼
Thom, near the end here you said, "To accomplish their remaking of America from a patriotic nation into a “homeland” of fear and hate, Republicans are taking several steps."
Well, Rachel Maddow overnight posted a video that is creating a firestorm, and which added detail to your "several steps":
Maddow points out frightening truth about Trump's lack of concern about votes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of9OP_a6MNg .
Maddow's video is making me believe there is a second BIG reason Biden passing the torch to Harris was very important. -He now can focus on this looming second coup attempt, rather than be campaigning.
Forewarned is forearmed. Trump and GOP are making it very clear about what they intend to do. The question is, what are the Dem's going to do about it.
More like packing his bags to move to another country in exile, possibly in my humble opinion! ?
There is a lot of unacknowledged treason occuring in our country.
Mr. Monett, in view of Maddow's comments it is probable that, for the first and last time in this nation's history; a genuine election shall be thwarted and the loser shall be made the winner by openly cheating. If this probable, impending cheating is successful; the U.S. will become a dictatorship. And it seems it shall happen right before our eyes, similar to the way it happened to the Reichstag when Hitler and the Nazis took control of it.
One would hope you are correct: Biden and his administration are taking steps to thwart this takeover. But I doubt it. The Democratic Party has been asleep at the wheel since Ronald Reagan. Furthermore, some Democrats have actually been in cahoots with Republicans. I believe the Democrats shall win the election in the sense that they shall receive more votes. But they shall lose the election in the more meaningful sense that it shall be stolen from them in plain sight.
Those Enlightenment theorists were wrong when they said [according to Mr. Hartmann] "that ideas could transform societies." Ideas do not transform societies. Societies transform and create ideas. The violence, death and destruction of the colonial revolt which we incorrectly refer to as the Revolutionary War and the violence death and destruction of the War Between The States created those words of Jefferson and Lincoln respectively. Those high minded words applied to white males in a society which had an economy based on chattel slavery. The contradiction should be obvious. Black people were left out. Lincoln did indeed announce the Emancipation Proclamation. But it came late in the war. This should be a clue. It was true that there were some notable people who were opposed to slavery for purely moral reasons. But they did not hold positions of power in the national government of the North.
The Northern economy was based primarily on industrial machines while the Southern economy was based primarily on the human muscle power of slaves. Machines are more productive of power than human beings. Machines produce more energy per worker, per unit of time than human muscles are capable of. The Northern and Southern economic systems were in competition with one another for raw materials, labor and markets. The Northern system grossly out produced the Southern one and eventually replaced it through the horror of war. The out come of the war was inevitable. That outcome was part of a much broader, older movement of the social Order. It is this:
Each succeeding generation of the Social Order produces more energy per capita than the preceding Order. Never does this process reverse itself. This process is part of the process we call Evolution, both biological evolution and social evolution.
I repeat, ideas do not change the Social Order. Quite the opposite; the Social Order creates, shapes, and changes ideas. Ideas are a superstructure built on top of the Social Order, especially the economic system. And all of it is effected by the efficiency with which energy is produced. Socially this process can be traced from our earliest Hunter Gatherers to the present. Biologically this process can be traced from the first appearance of life on Earth billions of years ago to today.
Thanks for this summary. The whole FDR New Deal probably would never have occurred if blacks were included from the beginning in the 1930s. In spite of that awful fact, it did create a new "Social Order" that was not significantly eroded for almost fifty years, and has not yet been fully destroyed. The ideas created, shaped and changed by the New Deal Social Order they hope to kill completely as their first target. Then they will continue to reverse whatever Social Order we had after the Civil War, and after the colonial revolt.
Mr. Monett, thank you for your thoughtful reply. I agree with you as you say "it did create a new 'Social Order' that was not significantly eroded for almost fifty years, and has not yet been fully destroyed." The Old Order is, I believe at an inflection point right now. I am not well informed enough nor imaginative enough to see what the new Order might be. But there are barely discernible outlines and I can see that the U.S. is following the same steps which the Iberian Empire, French Empire and British Empire trod as they collapsed. These events are easy to trace in secondary historical accounts. I am not an Historian, so I do not analyze original sources. That is not my field.
SO grateful you passed this on! I saw it broadcast, and it's stunning! They think they have it "in the bag" because they own a few fanatics in a few counties! Yes, that's COUNTIES, folks. Let's summarize: if a county doesn't certify its election to the State, the State can't complete certification. You got it from there.
What great piece. The real enemy to me is Project 2025 and Trump's return to power.
Young folks now don't know much about WWII. Hence, they are unaware of how fast Nationalism turns into Autocratism.
From George Santayana:
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".
Thank you for laying out the distinctions between patriotism and nationalism. And Hannah Arendt has come to mind more often in the last few years than the previous couple of decades.
What happened to the distinguishing term "jingoism?" Just axin'.
Thom, in this single column, you present for any rational person why the ONLY choice in November is to vote blue for every office. Because every red candidate in the cult that used to be the Republican Party opposes all that makes this country what it is. A set of ideas and ideals, not an exclusionary, arrogant, ignorant tribe linked to a chunk of ground. That makes this election the most existential event in our history since the Civil War. Maybe even since the adoption of the Constitution. We cannot lose it, or we will cease to be a country worth keeping.
I’ve been thinking recently about the enlightenment and the ideas of liberty, equality, fraternity. And what we need now is a “new enlightenment.” Maybe we need to counter project 2025 with a “manifesto for a new enlightenment” where we outline what a truly enlightened society would look like, and steps toward achieving it.
Flavia ,
I agree -
But maybe that new enlightenment
could draw from the words of Socrates as revealed in Plato’s Republic. The four great virtues are wisdom , courage , discipline ( self control) and justice . And we cannot expect to find justice in a community in which one class has all the advantages, and the other class all the disadvantages.
The tricky thing with liberty, equality, fraternity is that it was entirely solipsistic among white men. The "fraternity" part probably meant Masons to them. These "high-minded" men had no concept of a female being human enough to be a witness in court. (Witness, mind you: juror or judge? Unimaginable!) I wonder if there isn't a literature as you describe for the future? Marianne Williamson? The intensity with which she was dismissed as a crackpot almost could be suspected as a hallmark of terrifying, unthinkable possibility. I'm having a senior moment about a couple of titles in my library..... You have the right idea. But you are not the first....
Wow! It came to me enough to get it! : "The Aquarian Conspiracy," Marilyn Ferguson. Recommend from an old baby-boomer idealist Green Party Pioneer and take a look at what we set up as a serious plan and process back in the day! How are the original "Ten Key Values" not a "manifesto for a new enlightenment?"
What are the Ten Key Values?" Google doesn't know.
It would be great to have a modern day book that fit together a next wave of being. There are utopia-oriented projects with laundry lists of virtues, but no grabber that's gotten under all our skins.
Gosh, I Googled "Ten Key Values of the U.S. Greens" and got a bit overwhelmed. Wiki history shows a lot of "evolution!" (When you know you're old!) But darn if there isn't this website: https://greenpartyelders.org/green-party-history/creation-of-the-ten-key-values/
Here's the Values: Ecological Wisdom, Personal and Social Responsibility, Grassroots Democracy, Nonviolence, Decentralization, Community-based Economics, Post-Patriarchal Values, Respect for Diversity, Global Responsibility, and Future Focus....
Local Green groups around the country eventually made slight changes to the exact wording of the Ten Key Values. The most common modifications were changing Post-Patriarchal Values to Feminism and/or Gender Equity; adding “Personal” to Social Responsibility (Personal and Social Responsibility); and adding Sustainability to Future Focus (Future Focus and Sustainability).
Me, I liked "post-patriarchal"
I consider it a highlight of my life to have attended the inaugural convention in Sacramento when The Green Party made the ballot!
This article by Thom Hartmann blew my mind, because it echoed something I wrote to my local paper back in 2018, when it still published letters from us locals of no importance. I even quoted Macron, that patriotism is "exactly the opposite of nationalism". I described nationalism then as putrefied patriotism, and a simmering potage of misanthropy. I stand by my words.
Make America Go Away GOP:
- Nationalist's in Patriot's clothing.
- Flooding the zone with lies to overload our ability to separate truth from fiction, with the explicit intent of creating zero-trust in anything.
- Revitalizing the undead Nazi America of the 1930's with "America First" rhetoric.
Actually most of the founders were Masons. The language and symbols are mostly Masonic. As president, Washington, was also leader of his lodge. https://gwmemorial.org/ 21 signers of the Declaration of Independence and at least 13 signers of the Constitution were Masons.
"Civil religion" emphasized freedom, free enterprise, and a limited role for the state. The natural rights philosophy of a "higher law" was also central to the thinking of American patriots, who believed that individuals joined together to create government while surrendering certain rights for the benefit of all. However, they also believed that certain inalienable rights could not be surrendered and that the government was bound to protect them. [I got this from the internet, but I got the same stuff from Demolay, the "builders" when I was a kid.]
Another great essay. Thank you, Thom, for your devotion to your country.
Violence and repression of women and children (and by extension, "lesser" males) are core values within the traditional nuclear family. I am not inferring all families, but traditionally, the father had an unquestioned right to beat the rest of them into submission (or even death) and, historically and almost universally, did so. Nationalism is an extension of this traditional, hierarchical family and it is no surprise it relies on violence and repression. "Homeland" is the expression of this hierarchy writ large across a nation. Hitler was likewise raised in such an environment.
Vance came from a traditional family structure where there was substance abuse and much violence in a culture of male white supremacy and religious patriarchy. I have no doubt he was whipped with belts and other implements. Conservatives never want to talk about their brutal child raising tactics other than to defend "spanking," which is just a word created to justify hitting or whipping a child, as if its not that big of a deal. A parent can legally to do to a child, 10%-20% of their own size, what would get that same person jailed for years if they did it to another adult OF their own size. Let that sink in. Conservatives and religious fundamentalist hysterically (and legally) defend these practices as religious freedom, a facade. Corporal punishment of helpless children has always been a religious/conservative tool of control, if not the primary tool; almost every religious cult whips its children and ignores domestic abuse against the wives. Even those supposedly gentle Amish have been caught out at it. Hence, MAGA supports violence, as they often say, to "get this country under control."
I grew up in Kansas and was both subjected to this and watched as pretty much everyone else in my sphere was treated likewise. They were MAGA before MAGA. It rolled downhill; dad hit mom, mom whipped the kids, kids would be mean to younger kids and animals. I spent decades learning to control my own urge to control everything and everyone around me; I never used violence; manipulation was my jam. To be honest, this simply wasn't an option, as I was a very small woman and I loved animals, often my only comfort. I'd like to think I've come a long way in this regard. And, having suffering corporal abuse as a child, I made a decision not to hit my own kids.
Trump's father was known to hit him with fists, often in the face, throw him against walls and berate him emotionally and intellectually. Fred ruled the family with an iron fist. "A baby is born into a family where he’s ignored by his father. When he does receive his father’s attention, his father constantly yells at, criticizes or punishes him. For the first two years of his life, this child’s mother is perfunctorily attentive, but not loving, and then abandons him for a year. From the time he was born until he is an adult, he witnesses his father abuse his older brother by terrorizing him verbally. This leads to his older brother becoming an alcoholic and dying at the age of 42. He sees his parents engaged in an emotionally neglectful, if not emotionally abusive, marriage." https://www.pacesconnection.com/blog/donald-trump-is-the-product-of-abuse-and-neglect-his-story-is-common-even-for-the-powerful-and-wealthy
Adults abused as children want control because their childhoods were out of control. And they want to control others in ways they could not when they were children. I had a conservative male friend tell me, "I just wish everyone would follow all the rules." That the rules were arbitrary and favored a select few wasn't an issue of concern for him. Rules created a predictability lacking in his upbringing. This is NOT exclusive to white people.
The urge to nationalism is just an extension of the urge to control. I would suspect that 99% of MAGA were hit as children; they share this distinction with almost every person in prison, belying the idea it is required to make children into good people. It is, rather, a desire to make children into submissive people. We can't vote child abuse, or the resulting desire for nationalism, out of our system; we have to end it and that starts with making corporal punishment illegal. This will take generations, especially if we regress. But the fight is a good one; like planting a tree that won't reach full growth in this lifetime.
With all the economic and social depressions and boom cycles and global warming and overpopulation and neglect, and divorces..... The family unit concept offers very little stability to most people. Only when children are raised where all their needs are met and they are not beat, can the human race evolve. No religion, racism or child abuse in the human growing centers! IMHO But with plenty of toys fields, playgrounds and fun and attention!
Your post touches me, as I was whipped with belt by dad, (on Mom's orders) and knew to fear my grandfather's razor strop hanging on the door when visiting grandparents. (didn't happen, that I remember, but funny how the sight of that leather lingers in memory.) What lingers so strongly isn't the punishment itself: it's the memory of injustice! What still stings is that I DID NOT DESERVE IT! (Whatever it was about.) I speculate that the main reason I am sharing with Thom's people is a chip on my shoulder about fairness and justice.
Every time I open up about being whipped, I get a rush of openness from others who share similar memories. I, too, was whipped for reasons that were ridiculous - mostly because my parents were frustrated in their own lives, I think. One of the most brutal was because I had asked for a dime to get a plastic ring out of a vending machine and then accidentally dropped it through the large central heating vent when we got home. I was about six years old and my mother was livid. I could give at least a dozen examples of this sort of thing. There is a weird sexuality around a lot of this. Type "spanking" into google and there are about 282,000,000 hits. That does not include whipping or other euphemisms. That should tell us something.
Here is what the Evangelicals are praying for, good Christians that they are, bloody vengeance, at almost every one of Trumps 58 rallies since 2022
In the Garden of Trump and Evil: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/in-the-garden-of-trump-and-evil
Anti antichrist Jesus freaks for Harris. https://www.votecommongood.com/
Having read the bible (twice) and reading parts of it through the years. Donald J Trump is the very definition of the antiChrist.
The Christians once salivated and ripped their shirts when they saw 666. A news letter I received in the mail back in the 1980's was peppered with "proof" of the anti Christ, even a picture of an Abrams Tank with the serial number 666.
And yet Jared Kushner owns a property 666 Park Place in NY, and not a freaking word from the "righteous Christians".
I don't know whether the Dominionists and white nationalists respond to exorcism, but some Catholics practice it.
Here in Baghdad By the Sea, sales of Trump dolls are brisk, both voo doo and Santeria varieties.
The Amish would hex their enemies. Some Iraq War veterans tell me that they were met with the evil eye by mufti when they took territory.
We need Democratic exorcists..... TV preachers to have epiphanies.
I don't like to use the acronym LOL, as I consider it immature, but I can't think of a better way to express my impression when I read the end of your next to last sentence, about mufti's and evil eye. There is such a thing in the Arab and gypsy world., Italian too.
By the way, when I was in Panama I married a Panamanian and had to (pretend) to convert to Catholicism because she wanted to marry the church of the golden altar (St Josephs, its alter was gold, painted black, to thwart the pirate Henry Morgan. As a consequence I wound up hosting, for dinner, apriest, who said that he was an exorcist, he must have noticed my eye roll, for the conversation turned steeley afterwards
Mr. Hartmann, you are well aware of my admiration for you and I fully understand, and respect, the spirit in which you have so masterfully articulated yourself in this article. Nonetheless, as a Black Man in the United States I trust you understand that we live an existence in which the European-American, whether he/she is cognizant of it or not, is constantly talking above and around us. You begin your piece speaking of Abraham Lincoln:
"President Abraham Lincoln, who steered America to victory against the white Christian nationalist Confederate movement, made clear his embrace of patriotism — loyalty to the idea of America — and his rejection of white Christian nationalism in his Gettysburg Address: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. …"
However, From Lincoln's Speech, Sept. 18, 1858 he states: "I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races -- that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making VOTERS or jurors of negroes, NOR OF QUALIFYING THEM HOLD OFFICE, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
Ergo, your assertion that JD Vance and the MAGA GOP Do Not Represent the True Idea of America & Our Core Values may be true from your standpoint but, from where I sit, they very much represent "core" values. Perhaps that is why Donald "Agent Orange" Trump received over 70% of the "white vote." Because, if he did not represent the "values" how is it that he is even a candidate, let alone a former president and possibly a future one?
Gee I wish my "like" worked. Oh, well. Count this as a thousand likes! That Lincoln speech is stunning! I supply the document: https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/debate4.htm
If the Republicans had not spent the last forty years tearing down the public education system, more people might understand the principles discussed in this article.
Every time I read one of your essays I want to run out in the street and scream at the top of my lungs! “Wake up! You’re killing America, you damn idiots! What is wrong with you?” So much is wrong that it’s so damn easy to lose heart. If the fascists win in November all is lost.
Hello Tom, I have been a longtime admirer of your shows on the old XM and now SiriusXM, in-fact, you were the inspiration for me installing my first XM radio in my van back in 2003, for those long trips from my home in Fort Washinton MD. to Oklahoma. I am still posting your articles on face book, but they are sectioning me and cutting off some functions to my account, X, has totally blocked my account but I will continue to post your articles and other members of the sub stack until face book cuts me off too.
Labels are powerful things as they can change how people think about things. When the grotesquely named USA PATRIOT Act ("Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to. Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism") created our own internal national police system, I knew we were in trouble. The authors of that act—which they undoubtedly had in the wings for years, just waiting for an excuse—were clever too, combining “patriotism” with the H-word. Then this Cabinet level department was largely replicated in every state, with incredible amounts of money sloshing around, thus guaranteeing that it is too big to control. Whether any of this works better than, say, the “War on Drugs” or how much is spent on “Defense” isn’t even a question, despite obvious and continuing failures. After all, “the people” are being given “protection.”
I believe it was the patriot act that gave us "HOMELAND" security!
Exactly Bob, which is why I said the "H-word". I'm sure the TV show using the same title help cement the term too, not that it needed much help by then (2010). A child's version of "Night Before Christmas" that my grandson had was taken from the point of view of NORAD and had a general being poetical about "protecting the Homeland." That made my skin crawl.