Hartmann Report

As Biden told us, we stand at an inflection point of history. The fate of democracy here and around the world is actually hanging in the balance. Hopefully our Attorney General was listening... Today’s the anniversary of hundreds of Capitol police, House and Senate staffers, Members of Congress and others who work in the seat of our nation’s government successfully fighting back the first violent assault on a congressional session in the history of our republic. Trump’s followers and fellow-travelers — including 139 Republicans in the House and 8 in the Senate — tried their best to end our way of government. They incited, participated in, and now are justifying the first violent attack on Congress since the Constitution was signed 235 years ago. They failed.

Is our “reality TV” media up to the task of comparing and contrasting the two political parties, and judging the most likely outcomes of the directions they’ve chosen? With the Republican Party turning to Trumpism, and the Democratic Party returning to their progressive roots, will we have an honest debate this election year in our media? “What you see is what you get” is an old cliche, but it’s endured all these centuries because there’s so much truth in it. “Don’t listen to what people say, instead look at what they do” is another truism we can apply to inform us about today’s politics.

The GOP does have a vision for America and beyond, as does the media aligned with them -- If you want to see that vision, look no further than the Eastern European nation of Hungary. The GOP has a vision for America and the rest of the “liberal” world. Yes, in 2020 they abandoned altogether even the idea of having a Party platform, and appear about to do the same for 2024, but they do have a vision. This is an election year and outside of being “against” teaching American history, “against” acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, and “against” voting rights for minorities the Party is still refusing to say what they’re “for.”

If an arsonist lit your house on fire, in addition to sending him to jail you could also sue his estate for damages - Isn't lighting the planet on fire worse? Most recently, 100 mph winds swept grass-fires through Colorado, leaving thousands homeless. It was 116 degrees here in Portland last summer, as wildfires and drought ravage the West. The Gulf Coast, South and Eastern Seaboard are now annually torn apart by superstorms, while the Midwest faces mile-wide tornadoes never before seen with this ferocity and frequency. Climate change has gone from the theoretical to slapping us in the face.

An early look at the next Hidden History book (out in March) which explores how Big Data has not only invaded our privacy but also left us vulnerable to domestic predators & foreign threats.

The GOP has put fascism on the ballot in 2022 and 2024: will democracy survive? When fascism reared its ugly head in Europe and Japan in the 1920s, it signaled a coming war. As a newer and slicker form of that despotism rises here in America, it may well bring the same type of crisis. We stand on the threshold of momentous change in this nation. While it’s rarely discussed in this frame, the next two elections will almost certainly determine what form of government we’ll have for at least a generation. Will America become more free and democratic, or will we devolve into a 21st century form of Trumpy fascism?

Or will we avoid the horrors of Americans killing each other in another futile effort to protect wealth gained by evil and destructive business practices, this time in service of fossil fuels? Christopher Sheats wanted no part of the insanity the rich people in the rest of his state were ginning up. The wealthiest plantation owners of Alabama had hatched a scheme to join up with the fabulously rich planters of several nearby states and try to take down the government of the United States. They had the money to make it happen, controlled most of the political power in the state, and had already required thousands of Alabama’s young men to prepare their slave patrol militias for a much larger war against their own nation.

Hunger in the USA — which stalks the lives of 1 in 5 American children — could end with just $25 billion a year, while this year Congress gave the Pentagon $25 billion more than they requested. Why? It’s the time of year that we’re all inundated, from email to postal mail to ads on TV, to give to charity. Christmas puts us into a giving spirit, and for those who itemize their taxes the 2021 deductions vanish on December 31st. Yet I keep finding myself talking back to the TV and crushed by the mail appeals. Why is a children’s hospital on TV asking for money when every other developed country in the world finances pediatric research and pays the full cost of kids who need medical care?

Privatization is a YUGE con perpetrated on the American people, run not by “the best minds” but by the greediest -- Now threatening to turn Ben Franklin’s libraries into corporate profit centers. It happened fifty-six years before Ben Franklin walked out of Independence Hall in Philadelphia and told Elizabeth Willing Powel, the wife of Philadelphia’s mayor and one of the most influential women in the nation, that they had just created “a republic, if you can keep it.” On July 1, 1731, Franklin and his twelve Junto Club associates incorporated the nation’s first public library.

But there's never been a more important time to look up, wake up, and get active... On Christmas Eve, Louise and I watched on Netflix the brilliant Don’t Look Up! starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, written and produced by Adam McKay and David Sirota. It’s being lauded as a metaphor for how we’re dealing with climate change in the face of petrobillionaire- and corporate-funded disinformation campaigns, but it’s so much more than that.