2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: I'm Canceling My Subscription to Sunshine Patriot Thom Hartmann's Program [View all]rjsquirrel
(4,762 posts)I've been calling out Hartmann for ages for his conspiracy theorizing in the service of selling Moar Gold and Mega Supa Beets to idiots who don't believe in science, economics, or common sense. The dude is a self-righteous pseudo-intellectual I refer to as the Liberal Glenn Beck, one who preys on the rank stupidity and fear of his core audience, willing to believe anything that corresponds to their world view in which the Bush family and the Illuminati are conspiring to scretly rule the world via the military-industrial-GMO-vaccine complex. And oh yeah the one percent. Lynch them. And Oh yeah, buy Moar gold because look at that stock market . . , oh wait it's actually up substantially on the year and near a record high, but TH hasn't bothered to cut new commercials warning that it's too high so he runs the ones where he screams that it's all collapsing NOW buy Moar Gold!
People who think Hartmann is some kind of genius strike me as either nuts or poorLy informed and educated. His rhetoric relies on the same tricks the right wing shock jocks use. And the same advertisers.
That said, if he's come around on Hillary maybe he's not as hopeless as he seems. His support for Bernie helped convince me that many Sanders supporters were motivated by angry conspiracy theories and paranoia. Listening to them call in and propose absurd conspiracy stories with which Hartmann would simply agree showed me how our far left wing folks are just about as anger-and-fear driven as the tea party nutcakes.
But it's funny as hell to watch the true believers turn on their false prophet, and I suspect it will be even funnier when Bernie himself sells out the cause for a paycheck or just for common sense pragmatism.
Stick a fork in it folks. We're done picking our nominee.