We must abandon our simplistic worldview and stop thinking that somebody or something (or as-yet-undeveloped technology) will save us.

There are two thought poisons embedded deeply in western culture, and together they threaten to kill us all, or at least turn the world into a hellscape we'd never wish on our grandchildren or anybody else, even Republicans.

They're the collision of salvationist christianity and Cartesian thinking. In a way, these philosophical contemporaries brought us our modern conception of hell, as characterized in the third triptych by Hironymous Bosch on which Leonardo DiCaprio based a documentary about global warming.

Cartesian thought isn't entirely the "fault" of René Descartes, but he certainly popularized the notion with his idea that the entire universe could be likened to a giant machine.

Everything runs according to certain laws, he suggested, and if you can just figure out the laws and find the right levers and switches, you can alter the course of nature to your liking in scales from the micro to the massive.

Read more at HartmannReport.com.

-Thom

Thursday's Daily Stack

Hour One: What's the latest strategy you right-wingers are going to try to use to blame Trump's surrender to the Taliban on Biden?
- Julio Rivera, Editorial Director - Reactionary Times / Contributor - Newsmax, American Thinker & Townhall.com

Article: "Opinion: Trump Surrendered Control of Afghanistan To the Taliban Last Year" by Rmuse.

Article: "Taliban going door-to-door executing Christians" by Bob Unruh.

Article: "Taliban 'carrying out door-to-door manhunt'" by BBC.

Article: "Rifles, Humvees and millions of rounds of ammo: Taliban celebrate their new American arsenal" by Zachary Cohen and Oren Liebermann.

Article: "UN report says al Qaeda present in 15 provinces of Afghanistan" by WION.

Article: "Senior Trump Officials Rip Former Boss for Afghanistan Pact: 'The Taliban Didn't Defeat Us. We Defeated Ourselves.'" by Joe DePaolo.

Article: "Trump officials back away from 2020 Taliban peace deal after withdrawal chaos" by Jacob Knutson.

Article: "The United States has closed at least 10 bases around Afghanistan. But drawdown details remain murky" by Susannah George and Dan Lamothe, November 27, 2020.

Article: "Donald Trump's new Pentagon chief STOPS all transition meetings with Joe Biden despite department being under attack from Russian hackers and in charge of vaccine delivery - but he claims it is just a 'holiday pause' " by Geoff Earle.

Article: "Top Taliban leaders are among the 5000 that Trump released last year over everyone's objections " by SemDem.

Tweet: "pro tip: if you sat silent when Trump abandoned Syria and evacuated exactly zero of our Kurdish allies and handed over our military bases to Russia, kindly sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up and spare us your fake outrage over Afghanistan. Biden is rescuing tens of thousands" by Jeff Tiedrich.

Article: "Will Salvationist and Cartesian Thinking Be Our Doom? " by Thom Hartmann.

Book: "Common Sense, The Rights of Man, The Age of Reason" by Thomas Paine.

Book: "Discourse on the Method for Rightly Directing One's Reason and Searching for Truth in the Sciences" by René Descartes.

TV: "The Borgias".

Painting: "Before The Flood" by Hironymous Bosch.

Article: "45 unreal photos of 'billionaire bunkers' that could shelter the superrich during an apocalypse" by Business Insider.

Article: "Review: 7 key scenes in Leonardo DiCaprio's climate film Before the Flood" by Leo Hickman.

Article: "Women's Equality Day – August 26".

Article: "On This Day: NFL star's national anthem protest sparks 'taking the knee'" by Ross McGuinness.

Article: "National Dog Day 2021 is on August 26".

Article: "Lyndon B. Johnson" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Gulf of Tonkin incident" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Vietnam War" (1955 - 1975) by Wikipedia.

Article: "James K. Polk" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Mexican-American War" by Wikipedia.

Article: "William McKinley" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Spanish–American War" (1898) by Wikipedia.

Article: "George W. Bush" by Wikipedia.

Article: "War in Afghanistan (2001 - 2021)" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Kabul airport bomb attacks cause many casualties" by BBC.

Article: "Afghanistan: How many people have been evacuated by each country?" by Georgia Roberts and Alix Culbertson.

Article: "Joe Manchin Faces Protests from the Left at Home in West Virginia" by Philip Elliott.

Article: "Bush rejects Taliban offer to hand Bin Laden over" by The Guardian.

Article: "Ronald Reagan" by Wikipedia.

Article: "United States invasion of Grenada", 25 October 1983 by Wikipedia.

Article: "1983 Beirut barracks bombings" October 23, 1983 by Wikipedia.

TV: "The Crown".

Article: "The White Queen (TV series)" by Wikipedia.

Article: "The Borgias (2011 TV series)" by Wikipedia.

Article: "The Vikings" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Ivermectin" by Wikipedia.

Article: "George Washington and the First Mass Military Inoculation" by Amy Lynn Filsinger, Raymond Dwek.

Article: "Edward Jenner" (cowpox vaccine against smallpox) by Wikipedia.

Article: "Variolation" (using smalllpox from patient on skin) by Wikipedia.

Article: "Barbara Lee's Lone Vote on Sept. 14, 2001, Was as Prescient as It Was Brave and Heroic" by Glenn Greenwald.

Book: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.

Book: The Hidden History of American Healthcare: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich by Thom Hartmann.

Book: The Hidden History of Big Brother in America: How the Death of Privacy and the Rise of Surveillance Threaten Us and Our Democracy by Thom Hartmann.

Article: "Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump 'knew they were lying' over ploy to sell condos, book claims" by David Smith.

Movie: "The Music Man".

Article: "Trump Shunned Quack Coronavirus Cures For Himself That He Pushed On The Public" by Amanda Terkel.

Article: "South Dakota Covid cases quintuple after Sturgis motorcycle rally" by Ben Kesslen and Joe Murphy.

Article: "Alabama Republican Gov. Ivey says 'start blaming the unvaccinated folks' for rise in Covid cases" by Veronica Stracqualursi.

Article: "Brooklyn priest delivering vaccine lies to worshipers: 'I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole' " by Travis Gettys.

Article: "6 In 10 Floridians Support Requiring Masks In Schools, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; 61% Say Recent Rise In COVID-19 Cases In Florida Was Preventable" by Quinnipiac.

Article: "South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem Joins Fellow Republicans in Quest to Kill Her Constituents" by Bess Levin.

Article: "Governor Tate Reeves Says No Mandates Or Lockdowns Despite COVID Uptick in Mississippi" by Emma Mayer.

Article: "US reports average of 1,000 Covid deaths for three consecutive days for the first time since March: Kentucky and Tennessee see record numbers of hospital patients and Alabama says infected people are filling half of ICU beds" by Mary Kekatos.

Article: "Red Brigades" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Kidnapping of Aldo Moro" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Revolutionary Organization 17 November" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Ron DeSantis" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Josh Hawley" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Tom Cotton" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Rick Scott" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Pelosi names Kinzinger to Jan. 6 committee, Cheney to make opening statement" by Knowhere News.

Article: "John Lewis Voting Rights Bill Passes House With Zero Republican Votes" by Sharon Zhang.

Quote: "The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I can not be Silent" - Martin Luther King Jr.

Book: Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World by David Vine.

Article: "Opium production in Afghanistan" by Wikipedia.

Article: "U.S. states rush to meet deadline to join $26 billion opioid settlement" by Nate Raymond.

Book: Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones.

Article: "War and McPeace: Russia and the McDonald's theory of war" by Mark Rice-Oxley.

Article: "Report on the Subject of Manufactures" by Alexander Hamilton.

Article: "Great Depression (1929 - 1930s) by Wikipedia.

Book: "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against The Middle Class" by Thom Hartmann.

Article: "Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" by Wikipedia.

Article: ""Revelations of Carter's Former Advisor : 'Yes, the CIA entered Afghanistan before the Russians…'" (1998)".

Article: "Reagan's Osama Connection" by Fred Kaplan.

Article: "Afghan children smuggled to Pak madrasas, taught ways of Taliban: police" by AP.

Article: "11 US marines and Navy medic killed and several wounded in Kabul blast, officials say " by John Bowden.

Article: "The fall of South Vietnam" by Britannica.

Article: "Carl Jung" by Wikipedia.

Book: Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud.

Hour Three: Why is 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste buried on a popular California beach?!
- Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist - Beyond Nuclear

Article: "'A combination of failures:' why 3.6m pounds of nuclear waste is buried on a popular California beach" by Kate Mishkin.

Article: "Fukushima operators to build undersea tunnel to release treated water " by AFP.

Article: "Nuclear fuel rods along the sand dunes" by M B. Regan.

Article: "Radioactive Waste - France" by Beyond Nuclear.

Article: "Sellafield's plutonium waste has continued to circulate in the Irish Sea" by Christina MacPherson.

Article: "240+ Organizations Sign Letter Opposing Subsidies for Nuclear Power in Infrastructure Bills" by NIRS.

Article: "Critics Decry $12 Billion For Nuclear In Infrastructure Bill" by Eric Tegethoff.

Article: "Report: $50 Billion Nuclear Bailout Would Undermine Biden Climate And Infrastructure goals" by NIRS.

Article: "Japan will ban spectators from Paralympic venues in and around Tokyo, except some schoolchildren" by Michelle Lee.

Article: "Newt Gingrich" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Newt Gingrich: Biden Administration Most Anti-American Presidency in History" by Brian Freeman.

Article: "Trump Administration Has Drastically Dropped Visas For Afghan And Iraqi Interpreters" by Quil Lawrence.

Article: "Biden suspects toxic exposure in Iraq killed his son Beau. Now he has a plan to help other sick veterans" by Tara Copp.

Article: "Did Trump Throw Kurds under the Bus for Turkey because of his Istanbul Revenue Stream?" by Juan Cole.

Article: "Irano-Afghan race" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Caucasian race" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Stephen Miller (political advisor)" by Wikipedia.

Article: "White people" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Treaty of Tripoli" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Pompeo meets with Taliban's political chief as historic Afghanistan peace talks begin in Qatar" by CBS/AP.

Article: "American Woman Refuses To Leave Afghanistan Without Staff, Rescued Animals" by Marvie Basilan.

Article: "Defense Sec. Austin says US does NOT have the capability to retrieve Americans in Afghanistan and tells all Americans to get to Kabul airport NOW to be extricated" by Jennifer Smith.

Article: "'No Friends But the Mountains.' What Life Looks Like for the Kurds of Syria, Now That the U.S. Has Pulled Back" by Karl Vick.

Article: "Widow Of U.S. Soldier Killed In Niger: Trump's Call 'Made Me Cry Even Worse'" by Willa Frej.

Article: "A Crippling 3rd Wave Of COVID Adds To Afghanistan's Woes" by Diaa Hadid.

Article: "Afghanistan crisis: Who are Isis-K?" by Frank Gardner.

Bill: "H.R.1 - For the People Act of 2021" by Rep. Sarbanes, John P. [D-MD-3].

Bill: "S.1 - For the People Act of 2021" by Sen. Merkley, Jeff [D-OR].

Bill: "S.4263 - John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act" by Sen. Leahy, Patrick J. [D-VT].

Song: "Masters of War" by Bob Dylan.

Article: "Judas Iscariot" by Wikipedia.

Site: Poor People's Campaign.

Article: "William Barber II" by Wikipedia.

Quote: "It's Easier to Fool People Than to Convince Them That They Have Been Fooled'" - attributed to Mark Twain.

Article: "The Afghan War Is Over—but Not for These Gitmo Prisoners" by Spencer Ackerman.

Article: "David Eagleman" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes: The Jane Elliott Experiment".

Article: "Jane Elliott" by Wikipedia.

Friday on The Thom Hartmann Program, 12-3pm ET

It's Anything Goes Friday!

And, the best of the rest of the news along with your calls right here on...

The Thom Hartmann Program, Occupying The Media 3 hours a day 5 days a week for "we the people"

And don't forget...Democracy is NOT a spectator sport...it begins with you...

Debate: Who Screwed Up Afghanistan Pullout? (w/ Julio Rivera)

No One Will Save You: Why Salvationist Thinking Leads To Doom

Can This Bill Stop Dystopian Future For Women (w/Lala Wu)

Could the "Monarchs" on the Supreme Court Tank Democracy?