The Agency knew that their best asset for selling their wars was Barack Obama -- the same reason so many in the security state were eager to get rid of Donald Trump.
The one time we get a president who honestly is against endless wars, the Democrats came out in full force against him. The media as CIA mouthpieces came out in full force against him.
I daresay no one can ever take a democrat seriously ever again that says they are anti-war.
"I daresay no one can ever take a democrat seriously ever again that says they are anti-war."
A more honest appraisal is that the vast majority of both Republican and Democrat politicians are pro-endless-war.
And, given the new surge in actual Progressives winning office (some 22 of the 23 Progressives who ran in the November election won), there probably will be more federal level Democrats seated in the new Congress who are anti-war than Republicans.
In the USA, being pro-perpetual-war is a bipartisan affair, though we Progressives are working to change that.
yeah, but will hollah at a foo who votes for Trump - even though under Trump we undeniably had a fighter against the intelligence spooks, a President to end the wars, a President motivated to embrace reform for American minorities AND a President the mealy mouth media would actually confront.
True story, the day or week after she lost 2016, Hillary Clinton was shoveling money at the "progressive" not for profits. MSDNC brings em on - they lose their minds. every authentic movement is co-opted and destroyed by the Neo-Libtard Dems
If he was so against them, why didn’t he end them when he had the chance? Why did he escalate in Syria? He actions were no different than the shitty presidents before him
You can review the last 20 years of airpower statistics: You won't find any other POTUS that presided in that timeframe where they had a drop that large in number of bombs released.
I can't speak for further back than that because I can't locate any data pre-2k on airpower statistics for weapons releases. I do seem to recall that we launched A LOT of cruise missiles back in the day though...
Unlike you I provide sources for my assertions. Nowhere did I Contradict myself. Trump has finished the wars that were in progress and has worked to draw down our troops and get NATO to pull their own weight. Again, no other POTUS has done this.
I think he has tried and every time a General de Estados Unidos Corps de Marinos haha opposed him, the Neo-Libtards piled on to ensure our President was in a more weakened condition to withdraw troops.
He has been pushing for troop withdrawals and has been running peace negotiations with everyone he can. Bringing us down to 2500 troops in Afghanistan will be a massive accomplishment.
Don't forget this is the type of resistance to a withdrawal he is facing:
Yeah, we should not be supporting that quagmire. I fault Trump on that one. On the positive side, striking peace deals/negotiations between Arab states and Israel has been stunning.
Don, agreed that this was in the "pro" column for Trump and that the Dems generally are going to align with
But it's important to remember that those in the bubble are part of a media-left echo chamber that is literally suffering from an irrational mental state. So they need to be pitied a bit to get to solutions, because they are succumbing to normal human emotions fed by the current social media and traditional news media business models. The AI algos push bad news info at them to purposely trigger their emotions and that's what drives the TDS.
Not sure how to end it, but we need to start by recognizing the problem and thinking of them with empathy.
If one good thing is to come from the 2020 election it will be this: that Biden supporters may come to realize that they are, in fact, useful idiots. Although, to be fair, only the ones in swing states were actually useful.
1) by painting the next Republican/conservative leadership as equally evil to Trump in every way, the bubble folks push too far and cause crumbling of their coalition
2) they successfully convince their side that even Chuck Grassley is 100% evil in all ways and can't even be spoken to, and we creep closer to real problems
After talking with an old friend whose beliefs are contradicted by a couple of the links in this very article, I'm grappling with the appropriate way to point them here without a) their carte-blanche dismissal or these sources, and/or b) their dismissal of my viewpoints in general. TDS is real, and the last thing they want to hear is that they've helped install yet another pro-war leader into office.
I dealt with saving a friend from scientology and one core feature of cults is their tendency to push you to disregard input from people, cast them out of acceptable thinking, including your family. This cult is no different.
The best way to work is to occasionally slip in something from the "acceptable" media sources that contradicts everything they think, because those do pop up. For example, the recent WaPo articles on Kyle Rittenhouse actally paint things fairly and don't make him out to be a beast, point out he wasn't militia, etc. Or point out as things creep forward how their thinking changes to introduce doubt of their sources - "a couple of months ago they had you convinced that antifa didn't even exist". It's basically the same process as one coming to doubt taught religious faith - it happens over time with a series of smaller pieces that start not to add up.
One key thing is give them a scapegoat - it can't be their fault they believed in Russiagate - they have to have the ability to rationalize their behavior and be able to clearly state that the media/social media sources lied to them.
Very astute observations, I’ve come to the same conclusions on Quora. Believers of politics or religion are essentially brainwashed and cannot be reasoned with. You cannot be emotionally invested in any topic if you want to try to be objective.
But here’s what I’ve learned - believers for the most part, do not care so much about the beliefs (or politics) as they do the group identity they claim. They need the group affiliation, the beliefs are a symbol of the believer’s dedication to the group.
It’s fascinating, you can watch less experienced partisans or believers in real time, justifying a policy that you bring up that they aren’t familiar with. Based on the way you frame the topic, they will assume the policy to be part of their tribe. When you reveal that this policy is actually held by the opposing side, they will immediately begin justifying why it’s not a game changer policy - they’re essentially covering for their own identity, the policy never was something they were highly opinionated on. Just like the BLM movement or Covid-19. The net is flooded with believers who refuse to recognize the Marxist leaders, or who actually root for more cases, more deaths, to buttress their group identity.
And you’re right, the only way to get through to these believers is to drop seeds and hope one takes root someday.
you're right about that, and it's too frustrating to deal with on a regular basis. i stopped talking to several friends this year, and not because i'm offended by our differences, but because i got tired of trying to have a logical conversation that didn't quickly go off the rails with certain people. here's the bottom line: if you think half the country is being bamboozled by partisan propaganda, how can you be sure you're immune from your own side's propaganda?
besides that, there are subtleties that seem to be lost on most; such as the fact that BLM is a self-described Marxist organization. but are the majority of their supporters interested in Marxism? hard to say, but i'm skeptical. on the flipside, look how many right-wing Christians seem to like Trump, one of the worst examples of Christian values i can imagine. and the Republicans who still support Trump's efforts to overturn the election are doing so for their own agendas, not his.
and on the flopside, good luck showing Glenn's article about Obama and Bush being far more harmful than Trump to any proud Democrat; they won't even read past the headline.
Good point about the propaganda. I’m pretty loud about denigrating partisanry, consequently I have to remember to check my own bias to make sure I’m not being convinced of something that is buttressed by opinion.
The Marxist leaders vs the supporters is a grey area too. My conclusion was that the leaders knew the supporters weren’t Marxist and were never gonna be Marxist, so there must have been another reason for them to come out and say that.
I figured it must have been a polarizing strategy that has worked before in color revolutions, and that this may be what they’re provoking.
The alternative is to presume the BLM leaders thought their ideology of no private property and everyone gets the same food coupon (while dissolving the meritocracy and it’s money system) actually stood a chance of being implemented in America - which is patently absurd.
Right now, there does seem to be a major influence campaign going on. I thought initially it was to get rid of trump, but I don’t see an end to this PC cancel culture either. It could however be something natural - like a byproduct of the social media age, hard to say.
But after reading another one of Glenn’s articles about the media blackout Hunter’s laptop, I’m convinced that the msm and social media were aligned in their support of Biden (or non-support of trump), and thus officially cannot be trusted. I mean, I haven’t trusted the media for years, but this last debacle makes it transparent - they are interested in swaying public opinion, which is propaganda.
Trump is, indeed, transactional. If he is going to push anti-war and pro-life policy for his benefit, I support him. The “Trump is a racist White Supremacist” trope is patently ridiculous, though, and I am beyond sick of it...
It's enough to cite Trump's comment about " ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world." He added that they should "go back" to "the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came" and that "I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!" twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1150381394234941448
So yes, he is a racist, in case you didn't know already. I am using the term "racism" here to mean a prejudiced state of mind characterized by a negative attitude toward people who are perceived as being in a particular race (or races). Such prejudice is the most plausible explanation for the negative attitude and inaccuracies in this series of tweets; if you don't know that, you have chosen not to know much about racial prejudice in America.
Everyone is biased to some degree. It's okay. Trump's racist comments about a bigoted Congresswoman who has the gall to condemn and malign America - a nation where she, an immigrant from an impoverished and violent country, was able to rise to the rank of a policy maker, an influencer, someone respected - does not bother me in the slightest. It may ruffle some feathers and bring up righteous indignation but where is the lie. She who hates America and wants to change America should show some humility. The beauty of America is that she doesn't have to, and she will continue to irresponsibly lecture us and wreak havoc in congress. Trumps comments mean nothing. You can call him a racist, but most Americans who value policy over clout agree with him. It was never about race, it was about her own hypocrisy. I am not white and I agree with him. My grandmother is an immigrant from a shithole country and I agree with him.
I see you're trying to shift the subject to Ilhan Omar. No thanks, that wasn't what I was talking about.
As my comments elsewhere show, I was talking primarily about the members of the Squad other than Omar. They were born in America. But even though these Congresswomen are American-born, Trump said that they "originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world" and told them to "go back" to "the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came". This, of course, isn't true. These American-born Congresswomen did not come from what Trump calls shithole countries. So the question is why Trump thought they did, and obviously the explanation for that has something to do with their not being white. Since these American-born Congresswomen weren't white, he concluded that they were from shithole countries. That's racist thinking.
I notice that your post wobbles back and forth about whether Trump is racist or not. But some of us can just say it straight: he is racist. If you like him despite his racism, that's up to you.
He's a racist in a sense that he'll state the obvious when the rest of America tip toes around reality in an incomprehensible way to avoid the title. The truth is, we are all racist. We all hold prejudices. That's human nature. Yes, I know your primary point wasn't on whether his comments hold merit but whether they were racist. Okay, they were racist. But that still doesn't make him a white supremacist, unless you're willing to call everyone a white supremacist (which many do) but that immediately renders the term irrelevant and useless.
By the way Randall, you can despise someone for their actions totally separate from their skin color. Well that is, unless you are obsessed with skin color and consider that as the most important thing about any person... the way CRT tells leftists that they must think.
I recognize that you're dodging the issue. You first tried to dismiss the idea that Trump was racist by saying it's "ridiculous". When I gave evidence for it, you ignored the evidence and started the old Straw Man trick of pretending to respond to me by bringing up views that weren't at all the same as what I was saying. These techniques are pathetic ways of arguing, and some of us are rational enough not to be fooled by them. The fact that you try to dodge the issue in this way shows how weak your case is; I wish Trump supporters weren't so dodgy, but it does make most of them easy to see through.
I don't think America is the source of all humanity's evil, duh. America is not a white supremacist country, if that phrase means to you something like what it meant to speak of "white supremacist South Africa" during the Cold War. Still, I recognize that racial prejudice and white supremacist views can be found in certain quarters in America, and that these views sometimes lead to negative effects on the lives of people who are not white. Your comments in your 2nd attempt at a reply are similarly misdirected; I have never seen critical race theorists say that "skin color is the most important thing about any person", much less insist on others thinking that way. More relevantly, it's not how I think. Trump's tweet was obviously not about how he "can despise someone for their actions", as your words suggest; instead, Trump was doing the very opposite of judging someone for their actions or for what King called "the content of their character". He was smearing people based on what his prejudice led him to falsely believe was "the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came".
Finally, when you bring up the fact that many have good reason to flee their countries to come to America, you fail to notice what anyone who is patriotic in the true sense should notice: that this kind of "voting with their feet" should NEVER be used by us Americans to make ourselves complacent about being a relatively good country, when we could be making the country greater that already is. I am patriotic in that sense; you, since you encourage complacency about racial prejudice, are clearly not.
I do see through your attempt to shift the subject to Straw Man views demonizing America, but it doesn't succeed in distracting from the other issue you were wrong on, namely that Trump is a racist.
Well we have arrived at a place where there is no compromise. You do not recognize the same facts as I do. He was attacking “the Squad” based on their widely quoted attacks on the moral character of America. Not on what you claim is his prejudice against their race due to their countries of origin. Not once did he comment on their race, yet somehow you, like all leftists, are able to read his mind (long distance style!) and draw conclusions on what motivated his rant. It is fruitless to argue about this because neither of us can read his mind. I will try another point of reasoning with you: even if he IS a racist(which I am not conceding), so what? “Thought crime” is not (yet!) illegal in America. Racist action, however, IS illegal under various civil rights laws. What law did he violate when he called them bad names?
By the way, have you ever been to Somalia or any of the Arabic countries? I have and they ARE shitholes.
I do not fall neatly into today’s ideological spectrum I am essentially libertarian. But what Glenn’s reporting and at least genuine attempt to cover truth tells me is that that truth actually brings people together even if they are ideological opposites.
Given the full truth, most Americans would oppose the forever wars and it would all collapse. As such, it’s obvious that the one thing the government and its nefarious little actors cannot tolerate is the truth.
I'd say half of America can't handle the truth. That's why they cling unquestionably to establishment media narratives that offer up false gods like BHO (who just released his third of three books....about himself).
Comfort food for the willfully ignorant. Because reality sucks.
i feel similarly. but why is knowing The Truth the end of the debate? even if we knew all the factors that contribute to political decisions, we would have a wide spectrum of opinion on policy proposals. information is only part of the problem. good decision making is far more difficult than it seems; and the more education you have, the harder it is to be certain.
My wish for the holidays is that President Trump goes to somewhere in Europe to have an unannounced meal with the US troops. Upon return to Andrews Air Force Base, the door to Air Force One opens and standing next to him is Edward Snowden and his wife. He has pardoned Mr. Snowden and brought them home to their parents waiting on the tarmac.
The fact that the Media and Dems immediately became forever war advocates is telling. But more telling is how quickly average American Dems did as well. If Trump was against it, they were for it. This is all possible because Americans have discarded anything that even resembles principles in favor of their “party”. Their views can be remolded in a matter of moments.
My liberal friends (and there are plenty of them, although the adjective doesn't really apply anymore) are so far oblivious to the fact that they've aligned themselves with neocons to become pawns of the wealthy, war-mongering elites. It's a sad, sad thing to watch.
Main Street Democrats haven't yet realized they are the party of Wall Street, the media empire, big tech, "lockdown" corporations, big pharma, and endless wars.
True. They only 'allowed' Bernie in the primary under specific conditions. There were several other dem presidential candidates who were deliberately omitted from the debates. He was allowed simply because as a socialist, they concluded he had no chance. Here's the only known interview of one of the other candidates in 2016 http://bit.ly/rocky2016-fraud
That requires a long answer. If I wanted 100% pure democracy that might be easy, but I don’t want pure democracy, just an increase in democracy which takes away power from unprincipled officials such as politicians. Designing a more democratic system that doesn't elect politicians is challenging. I hope and believe that some future generation will find a solution to it that works adequately. As of now, though, all I can offer is partial steps in that direction, but even just taking these steps would improve things. Here are my suggestions:
(1) All big economic packages, such as corporate welfare, should go to the voters for an up or down vote.
(2) Big decisions that involve picking an option from along a scale -- such as what percent of government spending should go to the military -- should be taken by public vote, perhaps by having voters pick options on a ballot every few years so that whichever option is chosen by the median voter gets put into effect.
(3) In general, have more participatory budgeting.
(4) Allow ballot initiatives at the federal level, and in the states and municipalities that don't currently have them. I don't consider ballot initiatives to be fully democratic, since they're too easily swayed by wealthy interests, just as elections of politicians are. But ballot initiatives do serve as a check and balance on politicians who disregard the people's voice, which is useful. In particular, initiatives that reject a set of new regulations or that undo an administration's rollback of regulations should always be allowed. Possibly, also allow recalls of politicians throughout the country at all levels.
(5) Community forums that don't have lawmaking power. In communities defined by shared interests and in geographical communities, there should be forums where people can hear from serious advocates on each side of a contemporary issue, and the people who attend the forum should get to discuss the issue. These forums should be better funded, more widely attended, and more widely heard than they are now, and they should be run by people who are not beholden to any political faction. It's essential for these forums not to have any kind of lawmaking role, or they would become corrupted by those who try to use them for power purposes. Those who attend these forums most frequently should have less of a voice in them than people who attend less commonly, to prevent the forums from being dominated by one faction. But the forums serve to help members of the public to work out what they think and to form civic networks with one another in a way that's not dominated by the power structure and serves as a check on those with political influence.
(6) Visibility of political discussion. Most major advertising channels (for instance, TV ads or YouTube ads) would be required to set aside a certain fraction of their space for two-sided discussion of political topics. Discussions would be recorded between skilled participants chosen by an algorithm, test audiences would decide which discussions are most interesting, and the most interesting discussions would be pushed into the advertising channels in a random way so that no particular segment of the audience is excessively targeted for any particular message. Again, this helps people become more informed.
(7) Opting out from politicians. In our current system, politicians in Congress and other legislatures are given the power to make laws as if they were the authentic voice of all the people in their district, when in fact the politicians are often working against the interest of most of the voters. Perhaps it would be better to give each voter the option of "opting out" from their local lawmaker politician and picking a legislative service to cast votes for them in the legislature instead. Depending on what percentage of voters in a given politician's district "opt out", that politician would lose a corresponding percentage of his vote in the legislature, which would be distributed among the chosen legislative services instead. So if 30% of the voters in a congressional district opt out, the elected Congressperson would no longer be allowed to cast the usual one vote in Congress, but only what counts as 0.7 votes, while the remaining 0.3 votes are split among the legislative services in proportion to what the people in his district chose. Each legislative service would be required to explain their votes, preferably in advance. Voters can change which legislative service they use at any time. It's important to allow one legislative service to "piggyback" on another: that is, if legislative service A is famous and gets a lot of opt-out votes from people around the country, other people can start up a rival legislative service which casts votes in largely the same way as legislative service A but differs on certain issues. These rival piggyback services are allowed to automatically copy the votes of the service they're piggybacking on except when they want to disagree. This discourages a famous legislative service from flouting the will of its supporters by trading its votes for backroom deals or hidden priorities, since if voters suspect that the famous service is doing that, they can easily move to a rival piggyback service with little disruption. Similarly, if voters don't trust their local elected politician, they can switch to a legislative service. No one legislative service should be allowed to control more than 10% of the votes in the legislature, and no more than 20% when piggybackers are included. Legislative services would not be allowed to have conflicts of interest, and advertisements could not promote legislative services except by quoting their explanations for their votes. Criticisms of a legislative service should be made automatically visible to those voters who support it.
(8) More widespread civic education. Some of it should teach people to get better at recognizing the kinds of abuses and wrong moves that political parties and movements have made in history. Some of it should teach the latest and the best techniques for helping campaigns for change, especially campaigns that don't have the power structure's backing, and should teach examples of when various kinds of campaigns for change have been succesful. Some civic education should be farmed out to groups from all parts of the political spectrum (as far as possible, groups that are not beholden to political leaders) which can teach their own keen sense of how to increase freedom and prevent abuses. And another part of civic education should bring out what groups from different parts of the political spectrum have in common. These different kinds of civic education shouldn't be taught only in school to young people, but should also be available as classes for people to re-learn later in life, like keeping up your CPR skills.
(9) Measures to raise the prestige and influence of forums and institutions that criticize and arouse opposition to potential abuses of power, even when this criticism goes against public opinion. This is necessary because, if politicians are no longer able to exercise a lot of power quietly, those who seek to abuse power will find that they need to make large sectors of public opinion into loyal and uncritical defenders of their abuses. Thus, as politicians' power is reduced, we need to compensate by creating more effective forums and institutions to awaken the conscience of individual citizens and of groups of citizens. The "civic education" that I discussed just above will help with that too.
(10) Measures to promote the voices of those who defend principles openly and aren't plotting some hidden means to advance a particular politician or faction. This should involve rewarding those who have shown an ability to command public attention and who have stuck to the same principles for a long time, even at times when it's not favorable to themselves or to any one faction.
Points (9) and (10) are because we need to guard against having a society where most people feel they need to support sneaky and unscrupulous means of advancing some faction's interest. Our current society, with its mealy-mouthed politicians and small-dollar campaign donations to pay for deceptive ads, induces those who watch politics to feel that they, as citizens, have to support sneaky and unscrupulous techniques to be effective. That makes our society even less democratic. We should work towards ensuring that, in a society with less power given to politicians, citizens should also be putting less energy into sneaky and unscrupulous techniques.
Sadly, I don't think they'll realize it any time soon. They'll be too distracted by the latest threats to democracy. On the menu for 2021: Covid and white supremacy, and how they're interrelated because those hateful MAGA-hat deplorables keep spreading the virus at their Klan rallies.
I spent a minute trying to figure out if you meant clueless or valueless, realized either worked and you may have just invented a neologism to represent both.
me too, i'm both good and smart, and i have all the right opinions. as far back as i can recall, i've always had the right opinions. i don't know what's wrong with other people.
If they're smart and good, then they are more likely to be in denial rather than simply clueless. I am confident many harbor secret suspicions that they confide to no one about -- not even their spouses. (I'm basically a "leftist", with the caveat that all left-describing labels are now FUBAR.)
It's really strange, you don't see the same from the right.
My personal belief is that it's because people leaning right, thanks to WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden, learned to distrust all media - even when it tells us what we want to hear.
There are far many more right leaning individuals critical of Republicans than left leaning individuals critical of Democrats.
Oh, and I learned to distrust the media long before wikileaks. You only need to be interviewed once and see what gets printed as a result to have a high level of disdain for traditional media.
Left leaning individuals relying on CNN for news were literally told it was illegal to go to wikileaks by them. Given that, it is unsurprising that they haven't seen the evidence firsthand.
yeah, mine too. when i point out that democratic presidents are equally security-state advocates, warmongers, and hypocrites, they look at their shoes and change the subject. even better, they can never figure out why the unwashed masses "vote against their own interests" so often. but the truth is, we don't know what other people's interests are, let alone what a particular candidate represents to them. biden demonstrated this hubris by telling a black guy on TV, "if you don't know who to vote for, then you ain't black!" same old arrogant joe from the '80s, right? so who should a black guy vote for? trump, an archie bunker type olde-tyme bigot and his empty-suit VP, or the biden/harris crime-fighting duo, who successfully put thousands of black people in prison for dubious reasons [crack will get you 10x the sentence of coke; you're welcome]. not the most palatable choice...
Glenn, care to run your own Pew-style survey of the political leanings of your readership? Based on the comment sections of your articles, I'd wager it'd be in stark contrast to what we see with the large, corporate outlets.
Yeah, I'd love to do this - my guess is 35% left, 30% conservative, 25% independent/libertarian, and the other 10% just whatever. I love that. I'm going to let the audience build for awhile and then do some kind of survey.
I'm a pretty staunch conservative with a very powerful bullshit detector, so I can't tolerate mainstream retail media any more. Thanks for your effort here.
Conservative evangelical with a longtime admiration/respect for Mr. Greenwald. We need more people with his courage no matter our political or religious views.
I am for gay marriages, abortions, gun ownership, freedom of speech, freedom of religion or lack of it, freedom to use or not use drugs...so probably libertarian
It was my second Green presidential vote. After Obama's 2nd term of drone bombings, and the twice disenfranchisement of Senator Sanders' presidential campaigns, I was done with the corporate-owned party of war hawks.
I'm not a part of whatever tribe you're referring to so I don't care. You're probably thinking of center-left or center-right tribes which I also have no use for.
Just allowing a comment section on your articles is enough to know you are a real journalist. Letting the people express their views about the topic, or call the author out on mistakes or obvious bias, should be a staple of journalistic integrity in the modern age.
Like a youtube video with comments turned off, any article without a comment section should be immediately suspicious to any intelligent person.
One thing I love about your writing is it's given me ideas and thoughts that have allowed my politics to get a lot messier. While I consider myself on the left, your critiques have opened me up to calling out all the bullshit I see on the left. I find myself able to understand such a wider range of beliefs.
Not sure where I fit any more. But I can handle the truth - if I can find it. Election fraud and how we can fix some of it in the future is very important to me.
My political leanings are VERY human. When anyone attacks those humans who hunt whales or eat dolphins I firmly defend them, as we humans all need to stick together.
Undoubtedly the primary group we should all feel the strongest membership affiliation to. Sadly I think its place has been supplanted by a variety of others.
Without question the leanings are much more diverse here. One of my favorite things about it is that there is still so much agreement on the gold Glenn mines for us in spite of that diversity.
The one time we get a president who honestly is against endless wars, the Democrats came out in full force against him. The media as CIA mouthpieces came out in full force against him.
I daresay no one can ever take a democrat seriously ever again that says they are anti-war.
"I daresay no one can ever take a democrat seriously ever again that says they are anti-war."
A more honest appraisal is that the vast majority of both Republican and Democrat politicians are pro-endless-war.
And, given the new surge in actual Progressives winning office (some 22 of the 23 Progressives who ran in the November election won), there probably will be more federal level Democrats seated in the new Congress who are anti-war than Republicans.
In the USA, being pro-perpetual-war is a bipartisan affair, though we Progressives are working to change that.
Sad truth is that the progressive wing of the Democrats might as well be a different party than the neoliberal moderates. They’re that far apart.
Yes, but with a brainwashed electorate who believes falsely that "we're a two-party system", then they wouldn't have a path to election!
yeah, but will hollah at a foo who votes for Trump - even though under Trump we undeniably had a fighter against the intelligence spooks, a President to end the wars, a President motivated to embrace reform for American minorities AND a President the mealy mouth media would actually confront.
but but but ... vote blueeee no mattah whoooooo
And don't forget the lowest unemployment rates among all demographics... ever.
I'll believe it when I see it
True story, the day or week after she lost 2016, Hillary Clinton was shoveling money at the "progressive" not for profits. MSDNC brings em on - they lose their minds. every authentic movement is co-opted and destroyed by the Neo-Libtard Dems
If he was so against them, why didn’t he end them when he had the chance? Why did he escalate in Syria? He actions were no different than the shitty presidents before him
He "escalated" to finish the war Obama started.
Which from the airpower statistics we can say he did.
https://www.afcent.af.mil/Portals/82/Documents/Airpower%20summary/(U)%20APPROVED%20Dec%202019%20APS%20Data.pdf
Bombs dropped per year on Iraq/Syria:
2015: 28696
2016: 30743
2017: 39577
2018: 8713
2019: 4729
You can review the last 20 years of airpower statistics: You won't find any other POTUS that presided in that timeframe where they had a drop that large in number of bombs released.
I can't speak for further back than that because I can't locate any data pre-2k on airpower statistics for weapons releases. I do seem to recall that we launched A LOT of cruise missiles back in the day though...
that is crazy
Utter nonsense. You’ve “corrected” my assertion only to contradict yourself. The only that he has ended is his presidency.
Unlike you I provide sources for my assertions. Nowhere did I Contradict myself. Trump has finished the wars that were in progress and has worked to draw down our troops and get NATO to pull their own weight. Again, no other POTUS has done this.
I think he has tried and every time a General de Estados Unidos Corps de Marinos haha opposed him, the Neo-Libtards piled on to ensure our President was in a more weakened condition to withdraw troops.
Trump did not start any new wars, but he has NOT finished any of the long running US wars. We are still in Afghanistan, Syria, etc.
He has been pushing for troop withdrawals and has been running peace negotiations with everyone he can. Bringing us down to 2500 troops in Afghanistan will be a massive accomplishment.
Don't forget this is the type of resistance to a withdrawal he is facing:
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2020/11/outgoing-syria-envoy-admits-hiding-us-troop-numbers-praises-trumps-mideast-record/170012/
what about Yemen?
Yeah, we should not be supporting that quagmire. I fault Trump on that one. On the positive side, striking peace deals/negotiations between Arab states and Israel has been stunning.
That war also started under Obama.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29319423
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian-led_intervention_in_Yemen
Incoming...be patient.
Don, agreed that this was in the "pro" column for Trump and that the Dems generally are going to align with
But it's important to remember that those in the bubble are part of a media-left echo chamber that is literally suffering from an irrational mental state. So they need to be pitied a bit to get to solutions, because they are succumbing to normal human emotions fed by the current social media and traditional news media business models. The AI algos push bad news info at them to purposely trigger their emotions and that's what drives the TDS.
Not sure how to end it, but we need to start by recognizing the problem and thinking of them with empathy.
If one good thing is to come from the 2020 election it will be this: that Biden supporters may come to realize that they are, in fact, useful idiots. Although, to be fair, only the ones in swing states were actually useful.
I'm 50:50 on which of two outcomes happen:
1) by painting the next Republican/conservative leadership as equally evil to Trump in every way, the bubble folks push too far and cause crumbling of their coalition
2) they successfully convince their side that even Chuck Grassley is 100% evil in all ways and can't even be spoken to, and we creep closer to real problems
After talking with an old friend whose beliefs are contradicted by a couple of the links in this very article, I'm grappling with the appropriate way to point them here without a) their carte-blanche dismissal or these sources, and/or b) their dismissal of my viewpoints in general. TDS is real, and the last thing they want to hear is that they've helped install yet another pro-war leader into office.
I dealt with saving a friend from scientology and one core feature of cults is their tendency to push you to disregard input from people, cast them out of acceptable thinking, including your family. This cult is no different.
The best way to work is to occasionally slip in something from the "acceptable" media sources that contradicts everything they think, because those do pop up. For example, the recent WaPo articles on Kyle Rittenhouse actally paint things fairly and don't make him out to be a beast, point out he wasn't militia, etc. Or point out as things creep forward how their thinking changes to introduce doubt of their sources - "a couple of months ago they had you convinced that antifa didn't even exist". It's basically the same process as one coming to doubt taught religious faith - it happens over time with a series of smaller pieces that start not to add up.
One key thing is give them a scapegoat - it can't be their fault they believed in Russiagate - they have to have the ability to rationalize their behavior and be able to clearly state that the media/social media sources lied to them.
We're getting there, slowly.
Very astute observations, I’ve come to the same conclusions on Quora. Believers of politics or religion are essentially brainwashed and cannot be reasoned with. You cannot be emotionally invested in any topic if you want to try to be objective.
But here’s what I’ve learned - believers for the most part, do not care so much about the beliefs (or politics) as they do the group identity they claim. They need the group affiliation, the beliefs are a symbol of the believer’s dedication to the group.
It’s fascinating, you can watch less experienced partisans or believers in real time, justifying a policy that you bring up that they aren’t familiar with. Based on the way you frame the topic, they will assume the policy to be part of their tribe. When you reveal that this policy is actually held by the opposing side, they will immediately begin justifying why it’s not a game changer policy - they’re essentially covering for their own identity, the policy never was something they were highly opinionated on. Just like the BLM movement or Covid-19. The net is flooded with believers who refuse to recognize the Marxist leaders, or who actually root for more cases, more deaths, to buttress their group identity.
And you’re right, the only way to get through to these believers is to drop seeds and hope one takes root someday.
you're right about that, and it's too frustrating to deal with on a regular basis. i stopped talking to several friends this year, and not because i'm offended by our differences, but because i got tired of trying to have a logical conversation that didn't quickly go off the rails with certain people. here's the bottom line: if you think half the country is being bamboozled by partisan propaganda, how can you be sure you're immune from your own side's propaganda?
besides that, there are subtleties that seem to be lost on most; such as the fact that BLM is a self-described Marxist organization. but are the majority of their supporters interested in Marxism? hard to say, but i'm skeptical. on the flipside, look how many right-wing Christians seem to like Trump, one of the worst examples of Christian values i can imagine. and the Republicans who still support Trump's efforts to overturn the election are doing so for their own agendas, not his.
and on the flopside, good luck showing Glenn's article about Obama and Bush being far more harmful than Trump to any proud Democrat; they won't even read past the headline.
Good point about the propaganda. I’m pretty loud about denigrating partisanry, consequently I have to remember to check my own bias to make sure I’m not being convinced of something that is buttressed by opinion.
The Marxist leaders vs the supporters is a grey area too. My conclusion was that the leaders knew the supporters weren’t Marxist and were never gonna be Marxist, so there must have been another reason for them to come out and say that.
I figured it must have been a polarizing strategy that has worked before in color revolutions, and that this may be what they’re provoking.
The alternative is to presume the BLM leaders thought their ideology of no private property and everyone gets the same food coupon (while dissolving the meritocracy and it’s money system) actually stood a chance of being implemented in America - which is patently absurd.
Right now, there does seem to be a major influence campaign going on. I thought initially it was to get rid of trump, but I don’t see an end to this PC cancel culture either. It could however be something natural - like a byproduct of the social media age, hard to say.
But after reading another one of Glenn’s articles about the media blackout Hunter’s laptop, I’m convinced that the msm and social media were aligned in their support of Biden (or non-support of trump), and thus officially cannot be trusted. I mean, I haven’t trusted the media for years, but this last debacle makes it transparent - they are interested in swaying public opinion, which is propaganda.
Well, this is pretty damn hard to argue with:
https://theintercept.com/2020/11/22/biden-drones-endless-wars/
*align with the neocons to drive wars.
Yup - it was a real awakening to see the CIA come out so brazenly against Trump. And the double whammy was the MSM who backed up all of the deceit.
But you repeat yourself.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/glenn-greenwald-levels-msm-journo-who-claims-hes-endangering-cia-mouthpiece-media
Agree.
My heart on your comment was assuming you were talking about JFK.
I should have said "In my lifetime." Sadly Substack doesn't seem to have a comment edit function.
Trump is, indeed, transactional. If he is going to push anti-war and pro-life policy for his benefit, I support him. The “Trump is a racist White Supremacist” trope is patently ridiculous, though, and I am beyond sick of it...
It's enough to cite Trump's comment about " ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world." He added that they should "go back" to "the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came" and that "I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!" twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1150381394234941448
So yes, he is a racist, in case you didn't know already. I am using the term "racism" here to mean a prejudiced state of mind characterized by a negative attitude toward people who are perceived as being in a particular race (or races). Such prejudice is the most plausible explanation for the negative attitude and inaccuracies in this series of tweets; if you don't know that, you have chosen not to know much about racial prejudice in America.
Everyone is biased to some degree. It's okay. Trump's racist comments about a bigoted Congresswoman who has the gall to condemn and malign America - a nation where she, an immigrant from an impoverished and violent country, was able to rise to the rank of a policy maker, an influencer, someone respected - does not bother me in the slightest. It may ruffle some feathers and bring up righteous indignation but where is the lie. She who hates America and wants to change America should show some humility. The beauty of America is that she doesn't have to, and she will continue to irresponsibly lecture us and wreak havoc in congress. Trumps comments mean nothing. You can call him a racist, but most Americans who value policy over clout agree with him. It was never about race, it was about her own hypocrisy. I am not white and I agree with him. My grandmother is an immigrant from a shithole country and I agree with him.
I see you're trying to shift the subject to Ilhan Omar. No thanks, that wasn't what I was talking about.
As my comments elsewhere show, I was talking primarily about the members of the Squad other than Omar. They were born in America. But even though these Congresswomen are American-born, Trump said that they "originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world" and told them to "go back" to "the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came". This, of course, isn't true. These American-born Congresswomen did not come from what Trump calls shithole countries. So the question is why Trump thought they did, and obviously the explanation for that has something to do with their not being white. Since these American-born Congresswomen weren't white, he concluded that they were from shithole countries. That's racist thinking.
I notice that your post wobbles back and forth about whether Trump is racist or not. But some of us can just say it straight: he is racist. If you like him despite his racism, that's up to you.
As a POC, I find your comments racist. See how simple it is?
He's a racist in a sense that he'll state the obvious when the rest of America tip toes around reality in an incomprehensible way to avoid the title. The truth is, we are all racist. We all hold prejudices. That's human nature. Yes, I know your primary point wasn't on whether his comments hold merit but whether they were racist. Okay, they were racist. But that still doesn't make him a white supremacist, unless you're willing to call everyone a white supremacist (which many do) but that immediately renders the term irrelevant and useless.
Same here. Not white. From a shithole country. Immigrant. Hahaha. And not bothered.
By the way Randall, you can despise someone for their actions totally separate from their skin color. Well that is, unless you are obsessed with skin color and consider that as the most important thing about any person... the way CRT tells leftists that they must think.
So they flee their shithole countries, to come to white supremacist America, the source of all humanity’s evil? That’s be pretty dumb, huh?
I recognize that you're dodging the issue. You first tried to dismiss the idea that Trump was racist by saying it's "ridiculous". When I gave evidence for it, you ignored the evidence and started the old Straw Man trick of pretending to respond to me by bringing up views that weren't at all the same as what I was saying. These techniques are pathetic ways of arguing, and some of us are rational enough not to be fooled by them. The fact that you try to dodge the issue in this way shows how weak your case is; I wish Trump supporters weren't so dodgy, but it does make most of them easy to see through.
I don't think America is the source of all humanity's evil, duh. America is not a white supremacist country, if that phrase means to you something like what it meant to speak of "white supremacist South Africa" during the Cold War. Still, I recognize that racial prejudice and white supremacist views can be found in certain quarters in America, and that these views sometimes lead to negative effects on the lives of people who are not white. Your comments in your 2nd attempt at a reply are similarly misdirected; I have never seen critical race theorists say that "skin color is the most important thing about any person", much less insist on others thinking that way. More relevantly, it's not how I think. Trump's tweet was obviously not about how he "can despise someone for their actions", as your words suggest; instead, Trump was doing the very opposite of judging someone for their actions or for what King called "the content of their character". He was smearing people based on what his prejudice led him to falsely believe was "the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came".
Finally, when you bring up the fact that many have good reason to flee their countries to come to America, you fail to notice what anyone who is patriotic in the true sense should notice: that this kind of "voting with their feet" should NEVER be used by us Americans to make ourselves complacent about being a relatively good country, when we could be making the country greater that already is. I am patriotic in that sense; you, since you encourage complacency about racial prejudice, are clearly not.
I do see through your attempt to shift the subject to Straw Man views demonizing America, but it doesn't succeed in distracting from the other issue you were wrong on, namely that Trump is a racist.
Well we have arrived at a place where there is no compromise. You do not recognize the same facts as I do. He was attacking “the Squad” based on their widely quoted attacks on the moral character of America. Not on what you claim is his prejudice against their race due to their countries of origin. Not once did he comment on their race, yet somehow you, like all leftists, are able to read his mind (long distance style!) and draw conclusions on what motivated his rant. It is fruitless to argue about this because neither of us can read his mind. I will try another point of reasoning with you: even if he IS a racist(which I am not conceding), so what? “Thought crime” is not (yet!) illegal in America. Racist action, however, IS illegal under various civil rights laws. What law did he violate when he called them bad names?
By the way, have you ever been to Somalia or any of the Arabic countries? I have and they ARE shitholes.
(typo: should be "greater than it already is")
Well played.
I do not fall neatly into today’s ideological spectrum I am essentially libertarian. But what Glenn’s reporting and at least genuine attempt to cover truth tells me is that that truth actually brings people together even if they are ideological opposites.
Given the full truth, most Americans would oppose the forever wars and it would all collapse. As such, it’s obvious that the one thing the government and its nefarious little actors cannot tolerate is the truth.
I'd say half of America can't handle the truth. That's why they cling unquestionably to establishment media narratives that offer up false gods like BHO (who just released his third of three books....about himself).
Comfort food for the willfully ignorant. Because reality sucks.
Brad I would have a hard time arguing with that. They might not accept it as truth. Some would. Enough would. But many cannot handle it.
Why assume "of three"?
i feel similarly. but why is knowing The Truth the end of the debate? even if we knew all the factors that contribute to political decisions, we would have a wide spectrum of opinion on policy proposals. information is only part of the problem. good decision making is far more difficult than it seems; and the more education you have, the harder it is to be certain.
Great comment kudos from a fellow libertarian.
My wish for the holidays is that President Trump goes to somewhere in Europe to have an unannounced meal with the US troops. Upon return to Andrews Air Force Base, the door to Air Force One opens and standing next to him is Edward Snowden and his wife. He has pardoned Mr. Snowden and brought them home to their parents waiting on the tarmac.
Seconded! Probably room for Assange on that bird too.
There better be, or I will never forgive Trump.
Excellent Idea
?? The pharmaceutical EOs were issued before the election.
The fact that the Media and Dems immediately became forever war advocates is telling. But more telling is how quickly average American Dems did as well. If Trump was against it, they were for it. This is all possible because Americans have discarded anything that even resembles principles in favor of their “party”. Their views can be remolded in a matter of moments.
It's no longer a party, it's a religion, complete with unassailable priests and doctrine.
Democrats ran the Vietnam War for damn near a decade. Mind you, Republicans complain when Democrats don’t kill ENOUGH people.
My liberal friends (and there are plenty of them, although the adjective doesn't really apply anymore) are so far oblivious to the fact that they've aligned themselves with neocons to become pawns of the wealthy, war-mongering elites. It's a sad, sad thing to watch.
Main Street Democrats haven't yet realized they are the party of Wall Street, the media empire, big tech, "lockdown" corporations, big pharma, and endless wars.
But they are going to find out.
Since at least the 2016 cycle, they're starting to get it.
In my view, there's no way Bernie lost the primary in either 2016 or 2020. I just wish he'd have had the balls to go independent.
He couldn't. He was "leveraged"
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/47397#efmAAAAB2
Thanks, Don, I'd missed that one.
True. They only 'allowed' Bernie in the primary under specific conditions. There were several other dem presidential candidates who were deliberately omitted from the debates. He was allowed simply because as a socialist, they concluded he had no chance. Here's the only known interview of one of the other candidates in 2016 http://bit.ly/rocky2016-fraud
I hope you realize that, contrary to the propaganda saying otherwise, Bernie isn't a "socialist", and, he would easily have won.
We desperately need ranked choice voting.
Ranked choice voting is an improvement but doesn't fix all that much. See Arrow's theorem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem
I prefer solutions that are more democratic than voting for politicians.
oh boy, i read that but got confused about the implications; what do you suggest instead?
That requires a long answer. If I wanted 100% pure democracy that might be easy, but I don’t want pure democracy, just an increase in democracy which takes away power from unprincipled officials such as politicians. Designing a more democratic system that doesn't elect politicians is challenging. I hope and believe that some future generation will find a solution to it that works adequately. As of now, though, all I can offer is partial steps in that direction, but even just taking these steps would improve things. Here are my suggestions:
(1) All big economic packages, such as corporate welfare, should go to the voters for an up or down vote.
(2) Big decisions that involve picking an option from along a scale -- such as what percent of government spending should go to the military -- should be taken by public vote, perhaps by having voters pick options on a ballot every few years so that whichever option is chosen by the median voter gets put into effect.
(3) In general, have more participatory budgeting.
(4) Allow ballot initiatives at the federal level, and in the states and municipalities that don't currently have them. I don't consider ballot initiatives to be fully democratic, since they're too easily swayed by wealthy interests, just as elections of politicians are. But ballot initiatives do serve as a check and balance on politicians who disregard the people's voice, which is useful. In particular, initiatives that reject a set of new regulations or that undo an administration's rollback of regulations should always be allowed. Possibly, also allow recalls of politicians throughout the country at all levels.
(5) Community forums that don't have lawmaking power. In communities defined by shared interests and in geographical communities, there should be forums where people can hear from serious advocates on each side of a contemporary issue, and the people who attend the forum should get to discuss the issue. These forums should be better funded, more widely attended, and more widely heard than they are now, and they should be run by people who are not beholden to any political faction. It's essential for these forums not to have any kind of lawmaking role, or they would become corrupted by those who try to use them for power purposes. Those who attend these forums most frequently should have less of a voice in them than people who attend less commonly, to prevent the forums from being dominated by one faction. But the forums serve to help members of the public to work out what they think and to form civic networks with one another in a way that's not dominated by the power structure and serves as a check on those with political influence.
(6) Visibility of political discussion. Most major advertising channels (for instance, TV ads or YouTube ads) would be required to set aside a certain fraction of their space for two-sided discussion of political topics. Discussions would be recorded between skilled participants chosen by an algorithm, test audiences would decide which discussions are most interesting, and the most interesting discussions would be pushed into the advertising channels in a random way so that no particular segment of the audience is excessively targeted for any particular message. Again, this helps people become more informed.
(7) Opting out from politicians. In our current system, politicians in Congress and other legislatures are given the power to make laws as if they were the authentic voice of all the people in their district, when in fact the politicians are often working against the interest of most of the voters. Perhaps it would be better to give each voter the option of "opting out" from their local lawmaker politician and picking a legislative service to cast votes for them in the legislature instead. Depending on what percentage of voters in a given politician's district "opt out", that politician would lose a corresponding percentage of his vote in the legislature, which would be distributed among the chosen legislative services instead. So if 30% of the voters in a congressional district opt out, the elected Congressperson would no longer be allowed to cast the usual one vote in Congress, but only what counts as 0.7 votes, while the remaining 0.3 votes are split among the legislative services in proportion to what the people in his district chose. Each legislative service would be required to explain their votes, preferably in advance. Voters can change which legislative service they use at any time. It's important to allow one legislative service to "piggyback" on another: that is, if legislative service A is famous and gets a lot of opt-out votes from people around the country, other people can start up a rival legislative service which casts votes in largely the same way as legislative service A but differs on certain issues. These rival piggyback services are allowed to automatically copy the votes of the service they're piggybacking on except when they want to disagree. This discourages a famous legislative service from flouting the will of its supporters by trading its votes for backroom deals or hidden priorities, since if voters suspect that the famous service is doing that, they can easily move to a rival piggyback service with little disruption. Similarly, if voters don't trust their local elected politician, they can switch to a legislative service. No one legislative service should be allowed to control more than 10% of the votes in the legislature, and no more than 20% when piggybackers are included. Legislative services would not be allowed to have conflicts of interest, and advertisements could not promote legislative services except by quoting their explanations for their votes. Criticisms of a legislative service should be made automatically visible to those voters who support it.
(8) More widespread civic education. Some of it should teach people to get better at recognizing the kinds of abuses and wrong moves that political parties and movements have made in history. Some of it should teach the latest and the best techniques for helping campaigns for change, especially campaigns that don't have the power structure's backing, and should teach examples of when various kinds of campaigns for change have been succesful. Some civic education should be farmed out to groups from all parts of the political spectrum (as far as possible, groups that are not beholden to political leaders) which can teach their own keen sense of how to increase freedom and prevent abuses. And another part of civic education should bring out what groups from different parts of the political spectrum have in common. These different kinds of civic education shouldn't be taught only in school to young people, but should also be available as classes for people to re-learn later in life, like keeping up your CPR skills.
(9) Measures to raise the prestige and influence of forums and institutions that criticize and arouse opposition to potential abuses of power, even when this criticism goes against public opinion. This is necessary because, if politicians are no longer able to exercise a lot of power quietly, those who seek to abuse power will find that they need to make large sectors of public opinion into loyal and uncritical defenders of their abuses. Thus, as politicians' power is reduced, we need to compensate by creating more effective forums and institutions to awaken the conscience of individual citizens and of groups of citizens. The "civic education" that I discussed just above will help with that too.
(10) Measures to promote the voices of those who defend principles openly and aren't plotting some hidden means to advance a particular politician or faction. This should involve rewarding those who have shown an ability to command public attention and who have stuck to the same principles for a long time, even at times when it's not favorable to themselves or to any one faction.
Points (9) and (10) are because we need to guard against having a society where most people feel they need to support sneaky and unscrupulous means of advancing some faction's interest. Our current society, with its mealy-mouthed politicians and small-dollar campaign donations to pay for deceptive ads, induces those who watch politics to feel that they, as citizens, have to support sneaky and unscrupulous techniques to be effective. That makes our society even less democratic. We should work towards ensuring that, in a society with less power given to politicians, citizens should also be putting less energy into sneaky and unscrupulous techniques.
A few more suggestions in my next comment.
Yes, and done the right way, NOT like it's done here in CA!
Do you know the data pre “rigged” has CA red?
Believe it or don’t, Bernie was a victim of the now famous Dominion Software “glitch.”
Infamous. And, "it's not a bug, it's a feature!"
Kind of eerie the initials of that company.
The Clintons sicc'd the spooks on his wife.
Sadly, I don't think they'll realize it any time soon. They'll be too distracted by the latest threats to democracy. On the menu for 2021: Covid and white supremacy, and how they're interrelated because those hateful MAGA-hat deplorables keep spreading the virus at their Klan rallies.
I'm a liberal and I am baffled by how many smart, good people can remain intentionally vlueless.
I spent a minute trying to figure out if you meant clueless or valueless, realized either worked and you may have just invented a neologism to represent both.
I bet he meant clueless, but good point.
and viewless..no less
me too, i'm both good and smart, and i have all the right opinions. as far back as i can recall, i've always had the right opinions. i don't know what's wrong with other people.
If they're smart and good, then they are more likely to be in denial rather than simply clueless. I am confident many harbor secret suspicions that they confide to no one about -- not even their spouses. (I'm basically a "leftist", with the caveat that all left-describing labels are now FUBAR.)
It's really strange, you don't see the same from the right.
My personal belief is that it's because people leaning right, thanks to WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden, learned to distrust all media - even when it tells us what we want to hear.
There are far many more right leaning individuals critical of Republicans than left leaning individuals critical of Democrats.
Oh, and I learned to distrust the media long before wikileaks. You only need to be interviewed once and see what gets printed as a result to have a high level of disdain for traditional media.
You sound like someone who knows.. I'd love for you to elaborate. 🖖
Left leaning individuals relying on CNN for news were literally told it was illegal to go to wikileaks by them. Given that, it is unsurprising that they haven't seen the evidence firsthand.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/law-prof-smacks-down-cnn-chris-cuomos-claim-that-its-illegal-to-possess-wikileaks-emails/
yeah, mine too. when i point out that democratic presidents are equally security-state advocates, warmongers, and hypocrites, they look at their shoes and change the subject. even better, they can never figure out why the unwashed masses "vote against their own interests" so often. but the truth is, we don't know what other people's interests are, let alone what a particular candidate represents to them. biden demonstrated this hubris by telling a black guy on TV, "if you don't know who to vote for, then you ain't black!" same old arrogant joe from the '80s, right? so who should a black guy vote for? trump, an archie bunker type olde-tyme bigot and his empty-suit VP, or the biden/harris crime-fighting duo, who successfully put thousands of black people in prison for dubious reasons [crack will get you 10x the sentence of coke; you're welcome]. not the most palatable choice...
Glenn, care to run your own Pew-style survey of the political leanings of your readership? Based on the comment sections of your articles, I'd wager it'd be in stark contrast to what we see with the large, corporate outlets.
Yeah, I'd love to do this - my guess is 35% left, 30% conservative, 25% independent/libertarian, and the other 10% just whatever. I love that. I'm going to let the audience build for awhile and then do some kind of survey.
Regardless of political leanings, I think what we all have in common is the desire for authentic, honest reporting... where ever that reporting leads.
That's what matters.
Amen
Amen to that.
I'm a pretty staunch conservative with a very powerful bullshit detector, so I can't tolerate mainstream retail media any more. Thanks for your effort here.
I’d say it’s the people to whom truth is more important than partisan horse shit.
Conservative evangelical with a longtime admiration/respect for Mr. Greenwald. We need more people with his courage no matter our political or religious views.
I am for gay marriages, abortions, gun ownership, freedom of speech, freedom of religion or lack of it, freedom to use or not use drugs...so probably libertarian
Add some socialist safety net programs to those issues you've mentioned, and you've got me.
Ex Dem. member of the nonexistent FDR/JFK party.
Me too. Demexit as of 2016.
Demexit due to watching Bill Clinton pick his cabinet for his first term.
Thanks for making me feel young! My Demexit was due to watching Citibank pick Barack Obama's first term cabinet. ;)
Me too. Demexit as of 2008
same. This was the first year I voted 3rd party
It was my second Green presidential vote. After Obama's 2nd term of drone bombings, and the twice disenfranchisement of Senator Sanders' presidential campaigns, I was done with the corporate-owned party of war hawks.
I am a civil liberties extremist, like my father before me.
What about if, like Nat Hentoff toward the end of his life, we just honest-to-goodness no longer know how to describe our political leanings?
I dunno if I'm the right guy to define righteousness but I know evil when I see it?
15 % trolling from the center. Keeps it spicy..lol
Militant centrist - fuck both sides I hate tribes
You honestly believe that centrists aren’t tribal?
I'm not a part of whatever tribe you're referring to so I don't care. You're probably thinking of center-left or center-right tribes which I also have no use for.
Just allowing a comment section on your articles is enough to know you are a real journalist. Letting the people express their views about the topic, or call the author out on mistakes or obvious bias, should be a staple of journalistic integrity in the modern age.
Like a youtube video with comments turned off, any article without a comment section should be immediately suspicious to any intelligent person.
One thing I love about your writing is it's given me ideas and thoughts that have allowed my politics to get a lot messier. While I consider myself on the left, your critiques have opened me up to calling out all the bullshit I see on the left. I find myself able to understand such a wider range of beliefs.
Not sure where I fit any more. But I can handle the truth - if I can find it. Election fraud and how we can fix some of it in the future is very important to me.
100% people willing to support great journalism!
Put me down as a Whatever.
Left Out
Human.
My political leanings are VERY human. When anyone attacks those humans who hunt whales or eat dolphins I firmly defend them, as we humans all need to stick together.
Undoubtedly the primary group we should all feel the strongest membership affiliation to. Sadly I think its place has been supplanted by a variety of others.
Have we met?
Without question the leanings are much more diverse here. One of my favorite things about it is that there is still so much agreement on the gold Glenn mines for us in spite of that diversity.