Thom Hartmann

Thom Hartmann broadcasts live from Santa Fe, August 27, 2004.

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Thom Hartmann is an American liberal talk radio host, television host, and author, who was formerly a psychotherapist, electrical engineer, and homeopath. His radio show, The Thom Hartmann Program, is nationally carried by Sirius/XM satellite radio. According to Talkers Magazine, his is the tenth most important talk radio show in America, and he is the most important progressive radio host.

He promotes 9/11 trutherism and extremely questionable views on medicine, such as anti-vaccination beliefs. He also has his own show The Big Picture on RT America (you know, the Russian propaganda network).

Biography

Thom Hartmann holds a PHD in "homeopathic medicine" and a masters degree in herbal medicine. If you think this means, "just studying cranks", further research shows he was a "homeopath". In the the past, he was also an, "ad man", a psychotherapist, and a private detective. Much later in his career he seems to acknowledge his former homeopathy profession may have just worked via placebo.

He has owned a number of businesses as an entrepreneur.

Radio style

Despite his mild-mannered style and sometimes batshit crazy views, he has demonstrated an intellect, which has allowed him to demolish with ease the arguments of people who only pretend to know about said issues (e.g., Rush Limbaugh and dittoheads who call in). Unlike most others on the radio, Thom Hartmann uses a cerebral approach, backing up what he says with at least some knowledge about the topics at hand. He also hosts guests who disagree with him and doesn't shout them down, preferring instead to engage them in a proper debate and answer questions from callers afterwards. He also engages callers who disagree with him in a similar fashion, and has a set policy of not letting people denigrate arguments put forth by previous guests or callers who cannot — since they are off the air — defend themselves.

Viewpoints

Like many of his ideological opposites, his religious beliefs inform his politics, such as when he argues that environmentally-unfriendly behavior is akin to crapping all over God.

Pseudoscience

“”When we realize that the entire world around us and within us is made from the stuff of G-d which we can experience as love, then the entire world becomes sacred. Every act of life is sacred. Every bit of creation is alive and vital and sacred, and touches us with love.

Hartmann dabbles in pseudoscience with his enthusiasm for the Gaia hypothesis.

He has also revealed himself as a bit of a New Age crank, writing books such as The Prophet's Way (which "melds recent discoveries in science with ancient metaphysical truths").

He also dabbles into anti-vaccine nonsense and even had the producer of Andrew Wakefield's film "Vaxxed" on his show.

As late as 2014, he has promoted a wide range of alternative medicine on his show.

9/11 truther

See the main article on this topic: 9/11

His name appears 41st on the 911truth.org petition, the same one former White House Green Jobs adviser Van Jones resigned over. Hartmann promoted JFK assassination conspiracies with his book Ultimate Sacrifice, in which JFK's murder is blamed on the Mafia.

Lucky guess: ADD/ADHD hunter-farmer origins

His "hunter versus farmer" proposal on the origins of ADD/ADHD, which argues that the conditions may be "leftovers" from early human history, had little scientific credibility at the time of its proposal. A study from the University of California at Irvine appears to support elements of Hartmann's thinking on the subject, but also challenges important parts of Hartmann's hypothesis. Hartmann proposed the hypothesis a long time before the UC study was published, raising the possibility that he might have plucked the theory out of his ass and gotten lucky later. On his television show The Big Picture, he did a commentary about public education based on his ADHD theories.

Failed guess: "2016 financial crash"

For at least 3 years prior to 2016, Thom was promoting the notion that there would be a massive stock market and general economic crash, specifically in 2016, or due to actions of the Obama administration, which would cause the United States to disintegrate. He chose that date as he argued the Obama administration chose that date, so as to delay, paraphrased, 'the full extent of the 2006-2008 bubble and financial meltdown', specifically to 2016. He implied that there was a "royalist conspiracy" to create a financial crisis, so that oligarchs can buy cheap property from the poor.

The first few weeks of 2016 there was a minor stock market correction, during which Hartmann claimed this was proof his prediction was coming true on his show. He put out a video entitled, "It's 2016... Here comes the crash". However, this was not a 'crash', but rather a minor correction. Nor was the correction followed by economic crisis or a recession. In fact the S&P 500 gained 9.54% in 2016 and 19.42% in 2017. He has also hedged his prediction, saying that his exact date may not be correct (then why give it a date on a book title??), while also repeatedly referring to his prediction as the '2016 crash' in a paperback book. Predictions of stock market crashes are in a way always, "true", as economic crisis regularly occur in market economies as part of the business cycle. It's only when you attach a fixed date to it, a presidential administration to the prediction (in this case Obama), when credibility is lost.

Only long after his predictions, in 2020, arguably, a stock market "crash" happened and although some people profited wildly, it would only be a "royalist conspiracy", to the effect that the 2020 coronavirus pandemic would have been a planned hoax by the wealthy. Regardless, the 2020 crash seems to have little to no connection to the Obama administration, or to 2006-2008, contrary to how Hartmann claimed a future crash would.

Against judicial review

He is also a promoter of Thomas Jefferson and John Locke's points of view of the purpose of government. He has also stated in no uncertain terms his dislike for judicial activism, but he goes much further than most opponents of "judicial activism," having advocated for the complete abandonment of the very concept of judicial review (presumably this abandonment would not be carried out retroactively, since that would leave segregation legal, abortion and sodomy illegal, interracial marriage banned in seventeen states, and publication of subversive literature a punishable offense). He gives as his reason for opposing judicial review that it is an affront to the U.S.'s "constitutionally-limited democratic republic" to permit the courts to strike down unconstitutional laws. Yeah…

Corporate personhood

He is a long-time critic of corporate personhood, arguing this is based on a (deliberate) misinterpretation of a Supreme Court precedent, and has called for abolishing it due to its deleterious effects on the global economy and society. Unequal Protection, a book he published in 2004, advocates this and even provides model laws for every US state to do this (fat chance, unfortunately).

Bibliography

This list of his publications was shamelessly ripped from Wikipedia:

• 2007: Cracking The Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, and Restore America's Original Vision, Berrett-Koehler (isbn = 9781576754580)
• 2006: Screwed: The Undeclared War Against The Middle Class and What We Can Do About It, Berrett-Koehler (isbn = 1-57675-414-6)
• 2006: Walking Your Blues Away: Practical Bilateral Therapies for Healing the Mind and Optimizing Emotional Well-Being, Park Street Press (isbn = 1-59477-144-8)
• 2005: Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK, Carroll & Graf (isbn = 0-7867-1441-7) by Lamar Waldron, with Thom Hartmann
• 2004: What Would Jefferson Do?, Harmony Books (isbn = 1-8821-0938-4)
• 2004: We the People: A Call to Take Back America, Coreway Media, Inc. (isbn = 1-4000-5208-4)
• 2004 (revised ed.): Unequal Protection, Rodale Books (isbn = 1-57954-955-1)
• 2004 (revised ed. – first ed. 1998): The Prophet's Way, Park Street Press (isbn = 0-89281-198-6)
• 2004 (revised ed. – first ed. 1997): Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, Three Rivers Press (isbn = 1-4000-5157-6)
• 2003: The Edison Gene, Park Street Press (isbn = 0-89281-128-5)
• 2000: Thom Hartmann's Complete Guide to ADD, Underwood Books (isbn = 1-887424-52-0)
• 2000: The Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century, Hampton Roads (isbn = 1-57174-166-6)
• 1996: Beyond ADD, Underwood Books (isbn = 1-887424-12-1)
• 1996: Think Fast!, Underwood Books (isbn = 1-887424-08-3) by Thom Hartmann and Jane Bowman, with Susan Burgess
• 1995: ADD Success Stories, Underwood Books (isbn = 1-887424-03-2)
• 1994: Focus Your Energy: Hunting for Success in Business, Pocket Books (isbn = 0-671-51689-2)
• 1994: ADHD Secrets of Success: Coaching Yourself to Fulfillment in the Business World , Select Books (isbn = 1-59079-017-0)
• 1992: ADD: A Different Perception, Underwood Books (isbn = 1-887424-14-8)

External links

• His website