And the funny thing is that his exhortation probably is, on the whole, correct. So why make up factoids? And he is not the only one making up broken theories of the causes of terrorism and (para)military resistance.
This is not hard. Iraqis kill Americans because Americans occupy Iraq and kill Iraqis. They’ll quit shooting Americans if the Americans are gone. It’s a very simple message: Go home, and we’ll stop killing you; if you stay, then we will kill you. (What’s more, as long as you stay, we will try to stop you from providing jobs for people, because we do not want your unjust occupation to ‘succeed’.)
Update: Thom Hartmann also quotes Alfred Korzybski one day (that a ‘map’ is not the ‘territory’ it represents) and on another day says (essentially) that he thinks ‘consciousness’ is a sub-atomic particle. Which perhaps indicates that Hartmann has read Roger Penrose’s stupid books, but certainly indicates ignorance of what AK was talking about in the quote.
I wish it were still Al Franken in this time slot. Al was very funny, but also his ignorance was simple ignorance, not nerdly ignorance; if Al Franken thought that a resistance was made of people without jobs, it would simply be an error, not an over-reaching nerdly exhortation. The next time Hartmann says ‘Jefferson’ or ‘Madison’ I’m going to