Nailed it.
I have one question for the Salon.com blogger who repeatedly states that he does not endorse Ron Paul, and who coyly demurs that his vociferous statements of Ron Paul’s sheer awesome are not endorsement but simply a wistful desire to see certain issues discussed during the campaign: Why the fuck isn’t he endorsing Ron Paul?
He obviously thinks that Ron Paul is the bee’s knees and that Obama is some sort of Muslim baby-killing, drone-happy dictator. There’s a reason the Salon.com blogger refers to Obama as “Dear Leader” and to Obama supporters (85 percent of Democrats, mind you) as cultists (as well as depraved individuals who would defend anything, including Obama raping a nun.) So if he is spending thousands upon thousands of words touting the “really important shit” that Ron Paul brings to the 2012 election while also writing screed after screed (after screed after screed) about all the ways in which President Obama is the worst, and how Obama is a centrist Republican whose fault it is that the current Republican candidates are in a state of sheer clusterfuckery, it seems to me that the Salon.com blogger should saddle up and endorse Ron Paul.
It’s getting ridiculous — really. His non-endorsement endorsement nonsense is positively Clintonian: “It depends on what the definition of ‘endorsement’ is.” Render unto me a break. The Salon.com blogger is fooling no one but his rabid supporters and the feckless media which invites him to speak for progressives, even though he is about as progressive as Gary Johnson, which is not at all. Oh, and don’t you dare mention the Salon.com blogger’s Cato Institute affiliation. He’ll go berserk and deny it (even though, apparently, his ties to Koch/Cato are not as tenuous as he would have you believe.)***
But people are starting to get it. The Greenwald sweater of polemical deceit is unraveling, and I like it. I like it because I find his sort of polemical discourse and rhetorical bomb-throwing to be a reckless distraction from the serious problems that confront us.
I especially like this, from Tim Wise — “Of Broken Clocks, Presidential Candidates, and the Confusion of Certain White Liberals.” It’s a thing of beauty. You should read the whole thing, but I’m going to excerpt what I see as the most salient bit:
I want those of you who are seriously singing Paul’s praises, while calling yourself progressive or left to ask what it signifies — not about Ron Paul, but about you — that you can look the rest of us in the eye, your political colleagues and allies, and say, in effect, “Well, he might be a little racist, but…
How do you think that sounds to black people, without whom no remotely progressive candidate stands a chance of winning shit in this country at a national level? How does it sound to them — a group that has been more loyal to progressive and left politics than any group in this country — when you praise a man who opposes probably the single most important piece of legislation ever passed in this country, and whose position on the right of businesses to discriminate, places him on the side of the segregated lunchcounter owners? And how do you think they take it that you praise this man, or possibly even support him for president, all so as to teach the black guy currently in the office a lesson for failing to live up to your expectations?
How do you think it sounds to them, right now, this week, as we prepare to mark the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, that you claim to be progressive, and yet you are praising or even encouraging support for a man who voted against that holiday, who opposes almost every aspect of King’s public policy agenda, and the crowning achievements of the movement he helped lead?
My guess is that you don’t think about this at all. Because you don’t have to. One guess as to why not.
It’s the same reason you don’t have to think about how it sounds to most women — and damned near all progressive women — when you praise Paul openly despite his views on reproductive freedom, and even sexual harassment, which Paul has said should not even be an issue for the courts. He thinks women who are harassed on the job should just quit. In other words, “Yeah, he might be a little bit sexist, but…”
It’s the same reason you don’t have to really sweat the fact that he would love to cut important social programs for poor people. And you don’t have to worry about how it sounds to them that you would claim to be progressive, while encouraging support for a guy who would pull what minimal safety net still exists from under them, and leave it to private charities to fill the gap. And we all know why you don’t have to worry about it. Because you aren’t them. You aren’t the ones who would be affected. You’ll never be them. I doubt you even know anyone like that. People who are that poor don’t follow you on Twitter.
~snip~
And please, Glenn Greenwald, spare me the tired shtick about how Paul “raises important issues” that no one on the left is raising, and so even though you’re not endorsing him, it is still helpful to a progressive narrative that his voice be heard. Bullshit. The stronger Paul gets the stronger Paul gets, period. And the stronger Paul gets, the stronger libertarianism gets, and thus, the Libertarian Party as a potential third party: not the Greens, mind you, but the Libertarians. And the stronger Paul gets, the stronger become those voices who worship the free market as though it were an invisible fairy godparent, capable of dispensing all good things to all comers — people like Paul Ryan, for instance, or Scott Walker. In a nation where the dominant narrative has long been anti-tax, anti-regulation, poor-people-bashing and God-bless-capitalism, it would be precisely those aspects of Paul’s ideological grab bag that would become more prominent. And if you don’t know that, you are a fool of such Herculean proportions as to suggest that Salon might wish to consider administering some kind of political-movement-related-cognitive skills test for its columnists, and the setting of a minimum cutoff score, below which you would, for this one stroke of asininity alone, most assuredly fall.
I mean, seriously, if “raising important issues” is all it takes to get some kind words from liberal authors, bloggers and activists, and maybe even votes from some progressives, just so as to “shake things up,” then why not support David Duke? With the exception of his views on the drug war, David shares every single view of Paul’s that can be considered progressive or left in orientation. Every single one. So where do you draw the line? Must one have actually donned a Klan hood and lit a cross before his handful of liberal stands prove to be insufficient? Must one actually, as Duke has been known to do, light candles on a birthday cake for Hitler on April 20, before it no longer proves adequate to want to limit the overzealous reach of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms? Exactly when does one become too much of an evil fuck even for you? Inquiring minds seriously want to know.
Yes — to all of it. I seriously want to know, because it makes absolutely no sense to me.
And you know what? Sometimes it takes a little whitesplanation for people to get it. Indeed, I think even the Salon.com blogger may have gotten it, since his weak attempt at a response was as follows:
Oh yes. Suffer the handful of RonPaulogists of color. The few; the voiceless.
Again, render unto me a break, pal.
The bottom line is this: Glenn Greenwald is always right… at least in his mind. And if you don’t buy the Greenwald narrative and wholly agree with his thinking, then you are wrong, evil, not worthy of good faith debate. Greenwald cannot fathom that those of us who have decided to flip Ron Paul the middle finger have already made the calculus: drone strikes vs. reproductive rights; wireless tapping vs. stripping of environmental, safety, and every other regulation you can conceive; an anti-war message borne of isolationism vs. whatever the fuck President Obama is doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan and wherever else; President Obama’s Racist Drug War™ vs. what would amount to stripping black people of their civil rights.
I’ve made my calculation. And I’m not going to listen to some rapacious raconteur make spurious claims about how my support of President Obama generally necessarily means that I support the murder of Muslim babies specifically, when that same raconteur placed his trust in the Bush Administration and supported the Iraq War when I never did.
During the lead-up to the invasion, I was concerned that the hell-bent focus on invading Iraq was being driven by agendas and strategic objectives that had nothing to do with terrorism or the 9/11 attacks. The overt rationale for the invasion was exceedingly weak, particularly given that it would lead to an open-ended, incalculably costly, and intensely risky preemptive war. Around the same time, it was revealed that an invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein had been high on the agenda of various senior administration officials long before September 11. Despite these doubts, concerns, and grounds for ambivalence, I had not abandoned my trust in the Bush administration. Between the president’s performance in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the swift removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the fact that I wanted the president to succeed, because my loyalty is to my country and he was the leader of my country, I still gave the administration the benefit of the doubt. I believed then that the president was entitled to have his national security judgment deferred to, and to the extent that I was able to develop a definitive view, I accepted his judgment that American security really would be enhanced by the invasion of this sovereign country.
See how it works? It’s okay for Greenwald to give the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt; let me repeat that — HE GAVE THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT — when most of us whom he now maligns as Obama cultists never supported the Iraq War, and never put our trust in the Bush administration. If Bush was Greenwald’s guy, then fine. To each his own. Bush wasn’t my guy and I sure as fuck didn’t trust him or give him the benefit of anything.
Ultimately, if Greenwald is going to argue that the blood of dead Muslim children is on my hands because of the calculus I have made and the issues that I have prioritized, then, logically, the blood of half million dead Iraqis is on Greenwald’s hands. That’s just how it is. I think his argument to that effect is specious and outright ridiculous, but I didn’t make the rules.
In fact, I don’t begrudge the Greenwald’s late political awakening. Lots of people have them. But, it’s one thing to have a late political awakening as Greenwald seems to have done. It’s quite another to emerge from that awakening a churlish and sanctimonious zealot. (One who, by the way, has yet to debate me substantively on any of the issues I’ve raised with him ranging from Libya, to the “due-process-free killing of al-Awlaki,” to the so-called indefinite detention bill.)
Glenn, you have had a political crush on Ron Paul since 2007. Just come out and endorse him. You know you want to.
***The point is not that Greenwald has affiliations with Cato, it’s that he dodges and downplays his affiliations while simultaneously castigating President Obama for, by way of example, appointing Jack “ZOMG! CITIGROUP!” Lew as his chief of staff. Put it this way: Greenwald’s affiliation with Cato is precisely the sort of thing that would send Greenwald into a rage, if Greenwald weren’t Greenwald. Get my meaning?
“Why the fuck isn’t he endorsing Ron Paul?”
Because it would cost him a huge percentage of his readers, is my guess.
ETA: Pretending to only play footsie with Paul gives him some “plausible deniability”.
Nah, I disagree. It’s cool to say that you’re so antiwar and such a civil libertarian that Ron Paul would be totally your guy if not for all those other things on which he’s disastrously horrible. That’s like catnip to the blogosphere hipsterati. But imagine, as I’ve used as an example a few times elsewhere, if some high-profile blogger classed as part of the “left” — although I don’t think that’s where Greenwald belongs, that’s where people see him — decided to enthuse over the populist economic message of Rick Santorum, saying that Santorum was so great on issues salient to the working class that he was to the left of Obama on them, and admitting that Santorum’s views on sexuality and gender may be abhorrent but if he were the candidate he’d trigger a long overdue discussion about liberalism and industrial policy. Anyone who tried that would be jeered and mocked, and deservedly so. But Paul gets special treatment because of the prevalence of a libertarian left in the blogosphere, while the race/gender/sexuality/class left gets denigrated as “identity politics” of a bygone age.
This. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Gawd, I hate these fucking frauds who pose as liberals and the stupids who eat that shit up.
GG can kiss my white ass. He’s a coward, as he has shown over and over with the coy Paul posts. Hell, the guy can’t even be bothered to fight for things he claims to truly care about, such as his partner’s inability to enter the country. He sits in his penthouse aerie pontificating about his purity ponies and what horrible people those of us are who actually get out into the streets and fight for what we believe. Fuck him. Fuck him sideways.
There’s no way that Glenn Greenwald would come across a blogger-pundit previously unknown to him, learn that he repeatedly praised a politician who published a newsletter with bigoted views and disparaged the Civil Rights Act; _and_ whose original claim to fame was defending the free speech rights of a racist; _and_ who partnered to form a political advocacy organization with another blogger whose most notorious contribution to political discourse was a blackface caricature, and conclude anything other than that said blogger-pundit was, at a minimum, guilty by association. And if he doesn’t like that, well, he should learn some argument strategies other than “Anyone who disagrees with me loves Barack Obama and dead babies in an indeterminate order.”
Flip, your comments are always spot on. Thanks for dropping knowledge over here. :)
w00t! Thanks ABL. XD
This is why you’re my hero. That asshole Greenwald can call me an ABL cultist all he wants; it won’t put a scratch in this. His cheap-ass, deceitful twists are laid bare.
You’re beautiful.
Tim Wise is that dude.
Its horrific that these fools, who will not feel any pain when these crazies take over try and encourage people who are already on the edge to take the plunge.
What about the non-white David Duke supporters? They’re proof that he’s not a racist, right, Glenn?
Exactly; what about black KKK admirers (and yes, there are a handful of such folks). Are they to be “marginalized” and “invisible” when most people of common sense and decency condemn that organization as one of the most overt examples of racism in the country?
Note to the “progressive” blogosphere: if you are rehashing the same ridiculous, offensive, *and racist* arguments which any reader could have found on stormfront 5 years ago, you have utterly and completely collapsed into failure and a caricature of yourselves.
Greenwald’s argument here about “marginalized” Ron Paul supporters of color is not only stupid, it is downright racist, and is the type of bs and mockery of the concept of racism which I could find at any hardcore wingnut or even white supremacist site.
B-b-but Glenn has a black friend! It’s just all of those other black people, who probably so evilly watch as the POTUS they support kills raped-nun babies (no, really, they literally watch! and applaud! and gleefully dance!) that Glenn despises.
Yeah, keep fuckin’ diggin’, Glenn, ya wiretappin’ fraud.
The only thing that’s done more damage at Salon than Greenwald is his crowd of acolytes.
Hack though he is, even Sirota doesn’t quite measure up, nor does Lind.
Greenwald’s readers/followers are perfectly capable of compartmentalizing when it comes to him, which is why they’re buying into his Ron Paul crush.
Seriously, for any progressive who was paying attention, there were big warning flags about Greenwald. One of them should have been his “work” with the Accountability Now PAC. The supposed mission was to recruit progressives for office. What it was, was a nice little cash bonus for Greenwald and Hamsher.
I’ve never met a left/liberal Ron Paul fan, although I’m sure such creatures exist. The most charitable reading I could give such a person (and I’m not inclined to be particularly charitable)is that he/she is unable to see the difference between a specific policy prescription and the political philosophy behind it. Paul’s political philosophy is (or should be) anathema to anybody to the left of Albert Speer and endorsing him for any office should be unthinkable.
If Paul actually introduced legislation for any of these goodies that lefties/liberals like, say, slashing the size of the US military and pulling back from most of its bases around the world, I’d obviously ask my congress-critter to support such legislation. That’s policy, and that’s as far as I can conceive of supporting anything to do with Paul.
“…awakening a churlish and sanctimonious zealot…”
Project much, ABL?
Now back to our regular programming……trolling, trolling, trolling, keep them doggies trolling, rawhide!
I see Glennie sent one of his underemployed lap dogs to try to throw down. Listen, son, go strap on your burkenstocks, run back to Salon.com and await Greenwald’s latest ramblings. As you can see, nobody is buying his reindeer games anymore and he will need the hits from his dwindling number of bong water drinkers.
Birkenstocks, dumbfuck, Birkenstocks. As you were trolls.
Thanks for the spelling correction, fucktard. I don’t wear those hideous things. Look up the word “irony” while you are blathering about trolls. Bless your heart and say hi to Glenn…
I see that the irony has been lost on you and so, I’ll see your irony and raise you a sarcasm. Now run along and brush up on your Obot talking points cuz I gots me a whole heap o’ troll droppings to deliver. Copy Troll1, over and out!
Admitting you are here to troll gets the ban-hammer. Go dry your bitter tears elsewhere. — Allan
:) :) :)
ABL, you take my breath away. Your analysis and writings are truly spot on. I again state that if there is only one thing I can thank John Cole for, it is bringing you to my attention.
At my age (mid-fifties) I didn’t believe there were many people who could leave me with lasting impressions. However, I’ve taken two things to heart that I’ve heard President Obama say repeatedly. One of them is we can have disagreements without questioning the other person’s motivations. However, the none of us are perfect, and I am beginning to question the motives of progressives, liberals and folks of “no party or clique” who continue to give Ron Paul the time of day, let alone sing his praises.
Greenwald does not have the balls to publically endorse Ron Paul. But they’re sized perfectly enough to attack a black woman who dares to publically call him on his shit. So prepare yourself.
The…best…thing…EVAH!! Tim Wise and ABL handed Greenwald a much needed ass kicking.
Couple of days ago, I stopped by Greenwald’s place at Salon, from a link somewhere else. I don’t even recall what the topic was, other than it was primarily written, like most of GG tripe, to bash Obama and his supporters. It was the usual word salad with lots of blown smoke and circular logic mixed with some fact, a lot of fiction and supposition to justify a preconceived declaration that Obama sucks and so does anyone who supports him.
But I left with the sense, mr GG was railing against some pretty intense inner demons and paranoid breathlessness that people were out to get him, AND his Oh so very important works. A true and creepy me against the world pathos, that almost made me feel sorry for the guy. Almost.
Truly, Greenwald is the greatest threat humanity faces. A guy who writes for Salon.com has the power to overturn all decent humane progressive values through criticizing the President of the USA.
be careful, sonny boy — those strawmen are flammable.
Dear ABL,
Please do not write about anything that is not the greatest threat humanity faces. Thank you.
In the meantime, I love it when you excoriate GG. You and Tim Wise are both on top of your game when it comes to this.
A Glenn Greenwald defender arguing that criticizing bloggers is a waste of time?
IT’S LIKE RAAAAA-AAAAA-AAAAAAAIN! ON YOUR WEDDDING DAY…!
This made me lol out loud.
See how it works? It’s okay for Greenwald to give the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt; let me repeat that — HE GAVE THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT — when most of us whom he now maligns as Obama cultists never supported the Iraq War, and never put our trust in the Bush administration
WOW, I hadn’t known Greenwald had said shit like this. Just WOW
case closed.
To be fair, Greenwald wasn’t alone in giving Bush the benefit of the doubt — so did “anti-war” Ron Paul, who voted for the AUMF.
I suppose now Greenwald gives the security forces and police in Brazil who kill poor kids in the streets “the benefit of the doubt” that they know what’s best for preserving public safety and the commonweal. I mean, he never writes about that stuff. And he’s certainly not required to — but the Greenwald Idiot Calculus dictates that if you support Obama or fail to question administration policy with sufficient venom, then you are clearly cheering on the deaths of kids in drone strikes. So applying that “principle,” by failing to openly question the human-rights abuses of police in Brazil (and if Greenwald has ever publicly written about this, I’d love to see a link — I’ve looked), then Greenwald is complicit in, and supportive of, the murder of kids in the favelas.
http://www.hrw.org/americas/brazil
Plus, the salient point is what ABL attached it to the duplicitous nature of his criticism, without considering those he is condemning now for supporting Obama in foreign affairs, whether or not they, like myself, were abjectly opposed to the Iraq war from the first mention of it by the Bushies.
I don’t necessarily outright condemn anyone from the left for “giving Bush the benefit of the doubt” but goddamn if they will lecture me for supporting Barack Obama, and his emerging genius dealing with a troubled world in a measured but assertive way.
Indeed, General. There is a whiff of being a “premature anti-fascist” in the whole thing, right? The people who knew that the war was going to be a boondoggle and said so (including a certain state senator from Illinois who was running in a Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat at the time) somehow have LESS moral authority than the guy who never voted because he believed things were hunky-dory (and as a well-heeled white guy, I’m sure Glenn DID think things were just fine from his perspective), supported Bush with the “benefit of the doubt,” didn’t think that anyone who was a United States citizen ever faced indefinite detention prior to Jose Padilla (apparently Glenn Greenwald missed history class the day they discussed Executive Order 9066), and referred to undocumented workers as “illegals” in a hysterical blog entry in 2005 (when he claims he was just a wet-behind-the-ears youth — he was in his mid-fricking-30s already) — THIS guy thinks he’s gonna lecture ME about what it means to be a progressive? Chomp down on my shit, Sonny-Boy.
On top of everything else, the notion that the left needs Ron freaking Paul in order for there to be an intra-mural conversation over Obama’s foreign policy and civil liberties record is just idiotic.
Did anyone notice any shortage of liberals and lefties criticizing Barack Obama’s handling of terrorism, foreign policy, surveillance, or…well…anything else in 2009, 2010, or 2011 before the Republican primary?
Excellent point, Joe. The reason this gets so much traction in part is that the media love the “apostate” story — “I used to be liberal but then I was mugged and I saw that we need to get tough on crime,” blah blah blah. And because the media establishment in DC in particular is hardwired to treat the GOP as the voices for “real America,” they adore finding “disgruntled liberals” in order to serve that agenda.
How many times have GOPers been on “Meet the Press” to discuss some policy initiative vs. people from the administration who are actually crafting that initiative? How often do liberals who support Obama in general (nobody supports a president in all instances, no matter what “Dear Leader” idiocy the Hamwalds of the world put forth) get a platform, vs. “the base is in revolt!” They want red-meat stories, and the (patently false) notion that Ron Paul presents a real leftie alternative to Obama is irresistible to them.
Like ABL, I have no issues with people changing their minds on, well, issues after contemplation. David Brock’s conversion gave us Media Matters, after all. What I DO have a problem with is intellectual dishonesty and demagoguery, and Greenwald embodies the worst of it.
Also, he’s a thin-skinned whiny crybaby. I think that’s what I find most amusing about the Salonistas — Sirota, Walsh, Greenwald. They scream themselves hoarse about how weak and spineless and Cavey McCaverson Obama is — but if you dare challenge them, their Unearned White Privilege goes into overdrive and it’s all “How DARE you talk to me like that! Don’t you know who I AM!”
One of the reasons I like supporting Obama is that he makes loudmouth lefties who have achieved no substantial goals of their own look like the All Hat, No Cattle sideshow acts they really are.
Following this Greenwald thing has been interesting, but there’s something that I think everybody’s missed so far. People have kind of sideswiped it, but nobody’s quite made the connection yet, so at the risk of looking arrogant, I’ll do my best to enlighten you all: The essential truth about Glenn Greenwald is that he’s a fundamentalist.
I know that seems odd, since he’s Jewish, and doesn’t seem all that religious, and we think of fundamentalists as being Christian or Muslim extremists; but there’s nothing inherently religious about fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is nothing more than an unyielding–and I would say unreasonable–faith in some belief. It can be a religion, but it can just as easily be something secular; in Greenwald’s case it seems to be civil libertarianism. All that you need to do to be a fundamentalist is to believe in something so deeply and unreasonably that it becomes the most important thing to you, it becomes what your life revolves around.
Now the trouble with fundamentalism is that your belif becomes The Truth, and it gets to where you can’t even conceive that it might be wrong, or even that it might not hold the answer to all of life’s questions, everywhere, at all times, under all circumstances. As it happens, though, there doesn’t seem to be any one-size-fits-all, easy answer to everything. Every belief has holes somewhere; nothing is absolute. And when your belief runs headlong into an inconvenient fact of life that would seem to bring it into question, the fundamentalist’s answer is not to question their own beliefs, but rather to deny the reality of what they’re looking at.
Greenwald seems to believe that civil liberties are the most important issue today in America, and, if I’m reading him right, the most important one anywhere in the world at any time. Everything else must yield to civil liberties. And if we have the broadest civil liberties we can in America, then all other problems would fade; or at least we could then get around to working on them. Until then, civil liberties are all we should care about. Now, I may be wrong about him, and I may be misunderstanding him, but I’ve read his stuff (when Bush was in office, I read him fairly regularly), and that’s what I understand him to believe, even if he might balk at the characterization.
I think civil liberties are vital, too, and I feel safe in assuming everybody else here feels that way also. But civil liberties are not the only vital political issue here or anywhere else. Other things matter. When millions of people are living in poverty here, I feel like we can put ending the badly-named War on Drugs off to the side for a while. When states across the country are working to whittle away voting rights, then, well, maybe I’m an asshole, but I worry a little more about that than about drone strikes. I want to end the drone strikes, too, but there can only be so many Top Issues at one time, and with everything else Obama has to deal with that Bush left us, I’d rather he deal with fighting voter suppression laws, getting our economy on track again and getting more people back to work than shutting down Guantánamo.
Greenwald seems–at least to me–to just wave away the need for Obama to deal with all this other shit; or he seems to imply–whether he’s convinced himself of this or not I don’t know, but as I said, fundamentalists have a way of denying reality when they need to–that Obama could do everything he wants with a stroke of the pen if he wanted to; the trouble is that he–Obama–just doesn’t want to do it. He also seems to believe that we O-bots don’t care about anything but worshipping our Dear Leader because, well, I don’t know, because we’re in thrall to his personality or something.
I’m not a psychologist or a sociologist or a professional writer. I know there are people here who could take this on and make some headway with it, so I’ll leave it to you to run with it. Have at it.
Horrendo, I think you’re really on to something here. Thanks for laying it all out.
I don’t mean to put words in your mouth, but I wonder if you’d permit me to make a small adjustment to clarify something you said….
“I think civil liberties are vital, too, and I feel safe in assuming everybody else here feels that way also. But civil liberties are not the only vital political issue here or anywhere else. Other things matter. When millions of people are living in poverty here, I feel like we can put ending the badly-named War on Drugs off to the side for a while. When states across the country are working to whittle away voting rights, then, well, maybe I’m an asshole, but I worry a little more about that than about drone strikes. I want to end the drone strikes, too, but there can only be so many Top Issues at one time, and with everything else Obama has to deal with that Bush left us, I’d rather he deal with fighting voter suppression laws, getting our economy on track again and getting more people back to work than shutting down Guantánamo.”
To me, it doesn’t even have to be explained in terms of prioritizing our attention by determining which things we care about most; rather, it’s looking at ALL the fires burning right now, and determining which ones we can get water to, and how many of them, and how quickly they can be extinguished. Because I don’t think it’s fair for the Greenwalds of the left to presume that President Obama (or any fellow lefties) necessarily put one problem ahead of others because of preference. Sometimes one problem gets priority because there are just too many fires for a limited amount of water. We could spend the entire time and resources (by resources, I mean political power advantages and public will) of a presidential term fighting one big-ass fire that will take decades to extinguish, OR we could extinguish other fires and begin to apply some water to that one big-ass fire, in hopes that we will gradually make that big-ass fire a little less big. I see it as a matter of resource allocation, not preference. It’s a cold way to view problems we all feel passionate about, but there you have it.
Thank you. You kind of polished it up, but that was what I was getting at. I think this fundamentalist angle is something for people to look into more deeply, though, since it goes a long way to showing how people like Greenwald think, and the better we understand their thinking, the better we can argue against their points. Fundamentalists are dangerous, whether they’re religious zealots, atheistic Stalinist fanatics or civil libertarian fetishists.
Brilliant.
I think that’s an apt characterization, and there’s one other element: he categorically refuses to accept that any right-thinking person might not be the precise kind of fundamentalist he is. I actually don’t think it’s terribly wrong for him to conduct a crusade by which “civil liberties” — and, again, it’s not really civil liberties tout court that he cares about, it’s intrusive state power, IMHO — are the only issue that truly counts. But he’s SO locked into that view that he meets every challenge to it with accusations of bloodlust and brainwashing: you only disagree with him because you can’t see past your loyalty to authority; you only disagree with him because he dares to challenge the authority you love too well; etc. I mean, Bill McKibben is frustrated with Obama about responding to climate change, but he doesn’t say that everyone who isn’t in mortal terror of climate change every second of every day is a mindless bootlicker, or that anyone who points out that Obama has done some good on that score (even if not as much good as is necessary) likes dead children.
Why is anyone LISTENING to this asshole? I mean we aren’t, but the PL emoprogs don’t get what this guy is really about. He’s as much of a FRAUD and CON PERSON as Green or Hamisher. Most of the time he lives in Brazil-which is another country. If he doesn’t want to call himself an American and actually LIVE HERE and fight for his rights, then his words aren’t worth shit to me. Fight for your partner’s right to actually live in the United States rather than running to Brazil. I understand there are ex-pats who still participate in our political system, meaning THEY VOTE-this isn’t about them. This is about someone who is sticking his nose in OUR business while kicking back with his partner in Brazil. That’s bullshit. Obama’s well on the way to crushing people like Greenwald, Hamisher, etc. and when he does, I’m going to be ecstatic. Clinton marginalized them and Obama will finish the job Clinton started.
Doc, the same reason why pragmatic progressives get annoyed with Glenn Greenwald is the same reason they get annoyed with Michael Moore – yes, he’s a self important jackass who is often wrong about anything doing with realpolitik. But, he has a bullhorn in the form of TV appearances and an editorial column, so he has a lot sway with many of the ill-informed folks calling themselves progressives.
Stellar comments section! Wow.
Aleth of POU fame spoke the definitive word on Greenwald 8 months ago:
Indeed. Thank you again (from an ABL lurker) for such a brilliant series of comments!
Actually, I like Michael Moore. As I like Cornell West & Tavis Smiley. I’m not sure it’s fair to lump them in with Glen Greenwald. Sure, they are very critical of Barack Obama, but they are genuine leftists. As am I. I disagree quite vehemently with Obama on a number of issues (primarily his embrace of neolib economic theories) but I’ll still vote for the guy. I do understand realpolitik, but that doesn’t stop me from wishing for better. I mean, Michael Moore is RIGHT about healthcare reform: single payer IS the only solution. I’m pleased with the reforms that the Obama plan has achieved, but they are meager in light of the current mess that we have. Acknowledging them as meager doesn’t make me a head-in-the-clouds idealist; it makes me a realist who knows we still have plenty of work to do regardless of who is in the Whitehouse.
Seriously – what are you talking about? What “neolib economic theories”?
Ha! The gauntlet has been thrown. You have stripped away beautifully at Greenwald’s double talking, hypocritical, highly questionable stance on Paul and PBO. Is he crying and sniffling in a corner somewhere? People talk a lot of shit but you can’t run from your own words.
I take that back, you can run but you can’t hide.
Greenwald, Paul and their ilk are the enemies of Progressives. We need more people like you at the forefront to challenge and repudiate their fundamentalist views. Unfortunately, the public has shown itself to be way too vulnerable…
The reason why Michael Moore and Cornel West can be lumped in with Greenwald is that vis a vis Obama they adopt character critiques of the president. They pretend to know what is in his soul and erect fantasies from this false pretense. Greenwald is the most odious practitioner. His columns about health care kabuki were central to progressive criticism of the ACA. Never mind that was pure conspiracythink. It “felt truthy,” and got his mug on the teevee.
The same to Moore and West. They attack the Fantasy Obama and get teevee time. For all their leftist beliefs, it is amazing how little of those beliefs get air time… Instead they hide behind their leftist ethos to lob slander.
Final point on Greenwald: why in the hell do we need Ron Paul for anything on issues? We have Chomsky and scores of others who critique the US from the left. Give them props instead of stealing their ideas like a hack and fluffing Ron Paul. However, I know the reason Chomksy gets no Glennlove: Chomsky says he voted for Obama and will again. Which means Noam loves dead Muslim babies.
ZOMG THINK OF THE POOR PAUL SUPPORTERS OF COLOR!!!1!!11!!!!!1!
“Oh yes. Suffer the handful of RonPaulogists of color. The few; the voiceless.”
I know one. He got stuck on the whole legalization of pot thing. I can understand why. He has cancer. But that doesn’t excuse anything else about Paul or his blanket support of Paul.
Paul’s followers worship their idol with the same fervor experienced by the newly minted (and Thetan erased) Scientologists. Even as we speak, a bunch of them are planning on moving to Costa Rica to live. Know why? The media hasn’t been “fair” to Ron Paul.
Yep. Reporting on a presidential candidate’s past history of virulent, mouth-foaming racism is soooooo unfair.
Has it dawned on real progressives yet that the so-called born- again “progressives” who where once Bush hand puppets (Jane Hamsher, Glenn Greenwald, Adrianna Huffington) began almost from the day of Obama’s inauguration to bash him on every conceivable front? They claim they voted for him, but I highly doubt it. I could just as easily claim that I didn’t vote for Ralph Nader and help screw up the 2000 election for Gore. Who would know?
These people aren’t liberals and never were. Every one of them and others like them can be traced back to the GOP. Kinda like a blue dog Democrat is a Republican in a donkey suit.
The tightie righties have taken to infiltrating the Democratic party as a political strategy (note fake Dems put up by Walker’s gang in the Wisconsin recall races if you can’t wrap your brains around it).
If it walks like a GOP duck, quacks like a GOP duck, and flaps like a GOP duck… it anin’t an elephant.
Pardon the typos: that was supposed to have read “Arianna” and “ain’t” – the edit window isn’t working for me and I’m so tired I’m not sure that those are the only two. G’night.
Unless Tim Wise edited his piece, the link pertaining to Glenn and Iraq is incorrect. Think you were probably referring to The Sad Red Earth where A.Jay brought it up in his Hitchens/Greenwald piece.
http://bit.ly/tODJTP