Hartmann Report

The Best of the Rest of the News. — How the Murdaugh trial illustrates privilege in America. — Fascists on the move. — Leaked audio is showing the crimes of railroad management, while bribes abound. — Investigative reporter Greg Palast tells me that Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp is raising large amounts of money as if he’s running for president. — How do we fix the FBI? — Crazy Alert! Apparently Marjorie Taylor Greene got the memo: Russia is on the verge of offering free land to American conservatives who want to live in a country run by a strongman dictator where it’s a crime to be gay, lesbian, or trans. — Geeky science! Want to power your house with your electric car?

Fascists always start by declaring themselves the victims of others. Victimhood is essential to the fascist worldview; it’s at its core. Today’s Republican Party, intentionally or unwittingly, is following a script. Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous poem begins with, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.” But, in fact, first they came for the queer people. A year before Nazis began attacking union leaders and socialists, a full five years before attacking Jewish-owned stores on Kristallnacht, the Nazis came for the trans people at the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin.

Pitting Americans against each other by race, geography, or even politics when simultaneously invoking bloodshed as a justified outcome is as anti-American as it gets. Marjorie Taylor Greene is calling for an American “divorce.” She apparently sees herself as a modern-day John C. Calhoun, a demagogue who serves the interests of the white oligarch class and, in turn, receives their support, and the power and wealth that come with it. She’s started a secession propaganda campaign much like Calhoun and his buddies did when he left the White House as VP in 1833, the same year England outlawed slavery on British-territory plantations and talk of abolition in the US kicked into high gear.

It’s become a virtual religion among America’s CEO class: maximize efficiency no matter what it does to customers, communities, or employees - Inefficiency, it turns out, has considerable upsides. ... It’s become a virtual religion among America’s CEO class: maximize efficiency no matter what it does to customers, communities, or employees. The result has been an explosion of efficiency across the corporate spectrum, leading to monopoly, oligopoly, price-gouging, a crippled small-business sector, staggering profits, devastated downtowns, and even driving today’s inflation.

This is mother’s milk for Christo-fascist Republicans. Ukraine is the international equivalent of Comet Pizza in Washington, DC. Make no mistake. There is a battle right now between autocracy and democracy around the world. Countries are lining up on either side. And that’s really what’s going on, at this stage, with Ukraine. This is literally a battle for the 21st century order. For the way the people of the world, the entire planet and all its resources, will ultimately be run and used. It could determine whether our world will be ruled by a small number of morbidly rich autocrats and their factotums, or whether it will be ruled by the people themselves through politicians freely and fairly elected.

What we’re seeing today in these attempts to regulate women’s behavior is a simple extension of religious fundamentalism and patriarchy that goes back as far as ancient Samaria... "The tale is one of an evil time, When souls were fettered and thought was crime, And heresy’s whisper above its breath Meant shameful scouring and bonds and death!" —John Greenleaf Whittier, “How the Women Went from Dover”

"The cooperative forces are biologically the more important and vital. The balance between the cooperative and altruistic tendencies and those which are disoperative and egoistic is relatively close. Under many conditions the cooperative forces lose, In the long run, however, the group centered, more altruistic drives are slightly stronger. Human altruistic drives are as firmly based on an animal ancestry as is man himself. Our tendencies toward goodness … are as innate as our tendencies toward intelligence; we could do well with more of both." —W. C. Allee, “Where Angels Fear to Tread: A Contribution from General Sociology to Human Ethics,” Science 97 (1943): 521

— Putin’s Mein Kampf: he had to invade Ukraine to stop the gays. — Poland is the next country Russia plans to invade? — What is America going to do about its white Supremacist problem? — Democrats honor Blue Slips while Republicans don’t! — Ronnie DeSantis’ higher education legislation has been released and it’s shocking. — The Washington Post is reporting that Elon Musk’s Twitter, after unbanning Nazis and white supremacists, is now selling “blue check” validation logos to Russian propaganda outlets, including one he amplified by responding to. — Trump returns to the scene of (one of) his crime(s). — In “Strange But Not Surprising News,” if a fetus is a person then isn’t imprisoning a pregnant women illegally detaining an otherwise innocent fetus? — Crazy Alerts! Trump’s favorite white supremacist and dinner date at Mar-A-Lardo is having a sad about being put on the federal No Fly List.

The GOP’s deepest brand is white, straight, authoritarian, wealthy & religiously fundamentalist. Their vulnerability is these can be re-cast as bigoted, homophobic, fascistic, greedy & hypocritical… Institutionally, Republicans know how to brand, or at least did until recently. Democrats don’t appear to, and haven’t for decades. The result is that Republicans have established a 40-year-long stable and largely consistent brand (at least until recently) while — because Democrats haven’t invested in their own brand — the GOP has also succeeded in branding Democrats. So, what is branding, how does it work, and why should progressive Democrats take it seriously as soon as possible?

Republicans have figured out how to have it both ways. They get cheap labor for their big business buddies, while stoking the hate and fear of their white racist base. Kevin McCarthy just came back from a press trip to our southern border, full of talk about how bad the Biden administration is doing with asylum and immigration. Today, another group of House Republicans are “holding a hearing” at the Mexican border. If you watch Fox “News” you know all about it. Republicans have figured out how to have it both ways. They get cheap labor for their big business buddies, while stoking the hate and fear of their white racist base, claiming that Democrats are responsible for increasing numbers of undocumented or “illegal” immigrants living and working in the United States.