1/ Americans must drive a stake through the heart of the NeoCalvinist Republican Party. (THREAD)
2/ Once again, negotiations over Covid relief show the stark differences between the Democratic and Republican Parties. That America isn’t shocked and horrified by GOP behavior is a testimonial to how well corporate media obscures these differences.
3/ Several Republican senators and their aides have gone so far as to suggest that giving working people even a single $600 check will cause them to “live high on the hog“ or will bring “communism“ to America.
4/ The same Republicans are enthusiastic when the very rich, their principal donors, get trillions in tax cuts and hundreds of billions in annual subsidies. When those pieces of legislation are being negotiated, “living high on the hog“ is not a phrase you will hear.
5/ What we’re watching in real time is the worldview promoted by many who share Betsy DeVoss’ Calvinist church’s worldview that being rich is a sign that God has chosen you as a “good person” and wants you to lead the country.
6/ As bizarre as this sounds, it’s actually an ideology that has an animated the Republican Party for over 100 years. If all people, at their core, are sinners and evil, the big question for conservatives is, “How do we find ‘good’ people to lead us?”
7/ Hundreds of years ago, religious leader John Calvin and his followers gave a simple answer: God tells us who should be leading our nation by showering those he favors with great wealth. Thus they should lead us.
8/ The extension of this idea, at the core of conservative thought since the days of Edmund Burke in the era of the American Revolution, has been that poor and working class people are not worthy of leadership because they are not blessed by God with riches.
9/ In the conservative understanding of both religion and a functional social order, only rich people should ever be allowed to rule.
10/ Burke pointed out that while people like hairdressers and candlemakers should be allowed to make a living, they should never be able to vote or participate in government. To this day, Burke is one of the most quoted figures among American conservatives.
11/ While Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, openly worries that giving a $600 check to people already receiving paltry unemployment payments that run out in two weeks would be a “double benefit,“ lines for food are stretching for miles in some parts of the country.
12/ The conservative billionaire class and it’s Republican Party say throwing bones to starving Americans is OK as long as they’re tiny bones. But they want their trillions in tax breaks and subsidies to continue nonstop...and Republicans in Congress are working hard to comply.
13/ Sadly, some Democrats are echoing their, “Oh my God, the deficits!“ rhetoric. By coincidence, they’re the ones whose political campaigns are mostly funded by billionaires and big industry.
14/ This Calvinistic worldview and the massive inequality it’s brought America over the last 40 years is a cancer destroying our republic. It’s made far, far worse by Supreme Court decisions gutting campaign finance laws.
15/ America once had the world’s strongest middle class and widespread social stability. While it didn’t extend to all Americans, we had a formula that worked and needed to be extended. Share the wealth with working people and tax the billionaires at a reasonable, above-50% rate.
16/ 40 years of Reaganism has gutted the middle class, wildly enriched the billionaire class and is now destroying the very democracy that generations of Americans fought and died for. We must drive a stake through its heart and and this poisonous ideology altogether.

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More from @Thom_Hartmann

15 Dec
1/ Mitch McConnell wants to let corporations kill you without consequence. (THREAD)
2/ Probably the most under-reported story of the year has been how Mitch McConnell is holding Americans hostage in exchange for letting big corporations kill Americans without any consequence.
3/ Mitch took you and me hostage back in May, when the House of Representatives passed the HEROES act that would have funded state and local governments and provided unemployed workers with an ongoing weekly payment.
Read 13 tweets
14 Dec
1/ Rebuilding trust in democracy and our American government requires both holding seditious Republicans accountable and restoring the protective functions of government. Here’s what Democrats must do and why. (THREAD)
2/ The reason tens of millions of Americans don’t believe Joe Biden won the election is a 40-year betrayal of the American public’s trust by Republican politicians, grifters, and con artists exploiting the once-good name of Lincoln‘s Party.
3/ Science, religion, and conspiracy theories are all, essentially the same thing: systems or attempts to explain the unknown, to make sense out of things beyond our senses or immediate, touchable reality. Thus, our vulnerability to con artists like Trump.
Read 22 tweets
10 Dec
1/ It’s time to defund the GOP. In yesterday‘s rant, I laid out all the reasons why Democrats should put at the top of their priority list “defunding the Republican Party.“ Here’s a little background, and how to do it. (THREAD)
2/ Back in 1981, the Republican Party decided to defund the Democratic Party. While the Republican party had principally been funded by rich people and big business since the 1920s, the Democrats were largely reliant on the labor unions.
3/ So Ronald Reagan, as part of his “Reagan Revolution,“ figured the best way to destroy the Democratic Party was to destroy America’s unions. His first shot was to destroy Patco, the air traffic controller‘s union, and he did it in less than a week in August, 1981.
Read 14 tweets
9 Dec
1/ How do we deal with a Republican Party that’s become a traitor to humanity itself? (THREAD)
2/ Politicians in New York State are discussing making Covid vaccination mandatory, and, predictably, Republican cultists are freaking out. “Freedom!“ they scream as they run around maskless, assaulting their fellow citizens with virus-laden breath.
3/ GOP cultists claim that vaccine manufacturers are participating in mind control experiments and public health measures are “un-American,” while we are dying from the highest rates of Covid infection and death in the developed world.
Read 12 tweets
8 Dec
1/ When will America wake up to the evil that has seized the Republican Party?
2/ We’ve seen it around the world and throughout history: when a political party or government exists solely to serve the very wealthy, and begins to lose power, they inevitably turn to authoritarianism and police violence.
3/ We saw this in Florida when Gov. Ron DeSantis sent State police with guns drawn to intimidate the family of whistleblower Rebekah Jones, who he’d earlier fired for refusing to lie about Florida coronavirus statistics and is publishing a daily “Florida coronavirus dashboard.“
Read 14 tweets
7 Dec
1/ What most vividly shows the difference between Ron DeSantis and Xavier Becerra? The crusade, and then the failure of that crusade, to make America into a fully authoritarian nation, and the return to democracy.
2/ Donald Trump is a full-blown authoritarian; anyone who’s ever read a decent history of Germany, Italy, or Spain in the 1930s, or knows the history of Pinochet in Chile, knows this is an irrefutable truth.
3/ But authoritarians don’t come to power by themselves; they have helpers. Ron DeSantis, a helper, bet that if he could cover up Covid deaths and misery in Florida, it would keep Trump in the White House and solidify DeSantis’ authoritarian political future as a “made man.”
Read 13 tweets

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