Hartmann Report

Will we finally feel safe and optimistic enough that romance will return to the big screen in a big way? Movies are a window into our culture. What do they tell us about the impact Trump and MAGA have had on our society, and how might they change if these malevolent, misogynist men are defeated this fall? I subscribe to over 100 Substack newsletters, but one of the most thought-provoking that I look forward to in my inbox is from Ossiana Tepfenhart. Earlier this week, she wrote about the death of romantic comedies ("rom-coms") and the impact the genre had on an entire generation when it dominated the 1990s: "I believe romantic comedies damaged an entire generation's expectations of dating. … There's an entire generation of men and women who think dating should be like a romance movie. … Rom-coms were great at tricking women into seeing the best in awful men and tricking decent men into being total losers. These movies (and their toxic messages) wrecked the love lives and dating mentalities of millions of people." Those excerpts lose a lot of the nuance Ossiana brought to her excellent article (so you should read the original!), but hopefully illustrate some of the brilliant points she made. Her "micro" view into the average personal impact rom-coms had on individuals growing up in the '90s, however, got me thinking about the "macro" implications of such changes in our overall entertainment culture, and what it might mean in terms of their larger societal and political ramifications.

Orbán’s Hungary is the GOP’s dream for America’s future… In Tuesday night’s debate, ABC’s host David Muir asked Harris about Trump: “This was a post from President Trump about this upcoming election just weeks away. He said, ‘When I win, those people who cheated,’ and then he lists donors, voters, election officials, he says ‘Will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, which will include long-term prison sentences.’ One of your campaign’s top lawyers responded saying, ‘We won’t let Donald Trump intimidate us. We won’t let him suppress the vote.’ Is that what you believe he's trying to do here?” Harris responded by saying that Trump was “fired by 81 million people” and is a “disgrace” who she would not allow to intimidate her, adding that “the world’s leaders” are “laughing” at him. Muir then turned to Trump for his response, and he was blunt: “Let me just tell you about world leaders. Viktor Orbán, one of the most respected men -- they call him a strong man. He's a tough person. Smart. Prime Minister of Hungary. They said why is the whole world blowing up? Three years ago it wasn’t. Why is it blowing up? He said because you need Trump back as president. They were afraid of him. China was afraid. ... North Korea was afraid of him. … Look, Viktor Orbán said it. He said the most respected, most feared person [in the world] is Donald Trump. We had no problems when Trump was president. …” So, who is this Viktor Orbán — the prime minister of Hungary — the guy who Trump holds in such high esteem and loves to quote at length?

Trump thought his “firehose of lies“ strategy would work last night. It’s called the Gish Gallop: Throw so many lies out all at once in a single sentence that your opponent is forced to spend all of their allotted minute or two rebutting your lies and never gets to her own issues. While many of his lies went unrebutted, and the moderators kept giving him the last word in violation of the rules (he took 42 minutes versus her 37), it still didn’t work out for him last night. In prepping for the debate, Trump apparently embraced Bill Clinton’s comment that: ”When people are feeling insecure, they’d rather have someone who is strong and wrong rather than somebody who is weak and right.” In that, Trump and his advisors miscalculated. Trying to project strength, he merely came across as rattled, angry, and weird.

For me, all the proof I need that Trump, if not the biblical Antichrist, is at least a political one, is what he says and does... A listener called into my program recently and asked, "Is Donald Trump the Antichrist and, if so, will he reveal himself at the debate?" I passed on drawing a conclusion, but then the lines lit up with a steady stream of people over the next few hours offering their "proofs" that Trump was, in fact, the Evil One come to ravage the Earth. That he's a literal and iniquitous thaumaturge. My first caller clearly hit a nerve. It's a fascinating question, though, whether put literally or metaphorically.

The new car from Arizona carmaker Lucid has an EPA-rated range of 511 miles on a single charge, meaning that we’re now well into the territory where “range anxiety” will become a thing of the past. And as battery “energy density” continues to increase while prices fall, 400-700 mile ranges for electric vehicles will probably be commonplace within a few years. But, aside from making it easier for people without a garage to own an EV and just recharge it every few weeks like we buy gas, what does that mean for both the future of transportation and its impact on climate change? The key to easily understanding both is hairdryers. Seriously.

Right-wing billionaires know that if average Americans understood their real agenda, we’d never again elect a Republican. And it’s been that way for a long, long time. As historian, author, and University of Wisconsin professor Harvey J. Kaye wrote in 2015 for Bill Moyers’s online magazine: Polls conducted in 1943 showed that 94 percent of Americans endorsed old-age pensions; 84 percent, job insurance; 83 percent, universal national health insurance; and 79 percent, aid for students—leading FDR in his 1944 State of the Union message to propose a Second Bill of Rights that would guarantee those very things to all Americans. All of which would be blocked by a conservative coalition of pro-corporate Republicans and white supremacist southern Democrats.41 It wasn’t always this way.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Trump Aide Who Assaulted Arlington Cemetery Worker Was a January 6th Mastermind. — On the subject of Trump’s “Big Lies,” his cultists are freaking out because he just admitted that he “lost the election by a whisker.” — Authorities are now going after the parents of school shooters. That’s a good thing. — Oklahoma Schools Revolt Against the State’s Absurd Bible Mandate. — Liz Cheney Rips Into ‘Misogynistic Pigs’ Trump and Vance. — Judge Juan Merchan went along with Trump‘s lawyers request to postpone his sentencing, so now it’s set for the week of Thanksgiving. — Wisdom School Alert: NLP: The Map Is Not The Territory-learning The Legend — Hunter in a Farmer’s World Alert: Are ADHD Characteristics Leftover Hunter Genes? — This morning at 9 am PT/noon ET, I’ll be hosting this week’s “Ask Thom Anything” for our paid subscribers. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Hopefully, for the good of the nation, the party will reject its most extreme billionaires and politicians and return to the classically conservative side of true American values... Liz Cheney — a member of multi-generational Republican royalty — didn't just tell Republicans this week they shouldn't vote for Trump. That would have been easy; he's manifestly unfit for office and a danger to our republic. Instead, though, she took a huge step beyond that, saying that she was voting for Vice President Harris and Governor Walz — openly implying that every decent, America-loving Republican should do the same. "As a conservative," she said, "as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this — and because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris." This could represent the earliest leading edge of a critical turning point for a GOP that has lost its way and, in the process, become an actual threat to our nation, peace in the world, and our children's future.

He intends to use it to try to bring the Biden administration, and thus the Harris/Walz campaign, to its knees in the next few weeks... Get ready. Donald Trump has made good use of the propaganda technique known as the Big Lie 1.0, famously claiming that the 2020 "election was stolen" from him. And now he's preparing to use Big Lie 2.0 to shut down our government this fall, believing it'll hurt the Biden administration and thus the Harris/Walz campaign. That second weapon — this Big Lie 2.0 — is the false allegation of widespread "voter fraud" in America. He intends to use it to try to bring the Biden administration to its knees in the next few weeks. And, as a bonus, if it works, he gets to prevent millions of people, particularly minorities and women, from voting. Republicans have been using this lie to attack the heart of our democracy right out in the open ever since the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, the year they responded by rolling out Operation Eagle Eye, yelling about nonexistent "voter fraud" and using it as an excuse to intimidate minority voters in the Goldwater/Johnson race.

It drained many of us of our hope and optimism, much as it did in the 1950s when Joe McCarthy last led a national bullying campaign… On his eponymous TV show, Joe Scarborough pointed out this week how angry and toxic Xitter has become recently. I've seen the same thing, as have many others; quitting Xitter has become a thing, largely as a result of the venomous culture that's taken hold there. This seems to be more closely connected to it being taken over by a morbidly rich South African immigrant who seems to delight in bullying his own child (and others) than to the political season; previous election cycles didn't see similar reports of such widespread hostility and bullying behavior that was driving people to quit particular social media sites altogether. That's probably because one of the first rules of social organization is that culture flows from the top down.