On the subject of journalistic lying, I long ago noticed a technique that is very frequently used. I suppose you could call it “headline deception.” It is ubiquitous. Does anyone know if this is taught as a deliberate propaganda technique in journalism schools, perhaps with more deceptive poetic name?
It starts with a half truth or outright lie in headlines of printed media. The article following begins by supporting the deception, then ends with a short paragraph that contains the truth. This allows
plausible deniability if the deception is exposed and becomes an issue. It spreads deception because almost nobody reads all the articles. Many false beliefs are implanted from searching the headlines.
@GlennG You yourself mentioned recently that traditional political labels are failing us. Ascribing 'free speech' to 'the Right' instead of it's traditional home on 'the Left' reinforces that as well as the decidedly illiberal behavior of Progressives in their support of censorship. This episode in the House leadership squabble reinforces that.
So long as we continue to support the traditional 'teams' we all lose. So let's lose the capital letters and move from noun to adjectives, perhaps. I'd love to hear/participate in a discussion of what characterizes the bulk of this nation and how we label it.
We need an viable alternative to Dems and Repubs. I think there is a yearning for equality, fairness, honesty, and a focus on people over institutions. That yearning I believe includes a swath of people that supercede today's labels.
I was always a registered democrat and certainly have seen them become more conservative, less liberal in their policies through the years. Bill Clinton really shifted the party to the right and I was no longer happy with them, although I did vote for Gore, because of his position and concern on the issue of climate change. For various reasons I always thought the 2001 election was stolen. Although I voted for Obama and thought he would shift the party back to a more liberal stance, he didn't. The only one I've come across who feels he was no liberal is Jimmy Dore. During the Trump years they lost me forever, and not only because they tried to remove an elected president from office, and gave their continued support for our neo-liberal wars, but during the Trump years I saw them become very authoritarian. They all thought Trump was an illegitimate president and had to go. No one who adopts that position is any kind of liberal. Their rigidity in this regard grew over a period of four years, and all stuck to the same Trump story operating in lockstep. I saw the same thing happened to those who voted for the democrats, their base, and on CNN, and MSNBC as well. They have become more hateful, and more extreme. No wonder they demand full allegiance from their base, all authoritarians do.
This really has gone too far. I don't know what's going on, whether it's the desire to increase your subscriber base or you've actually become a gullible fool for or a tool of the right/GOP. Going after what's become of the left is great, but trying to portray the right as if they're substantially better is beyond ludicrous. Here, you seem to to be saying the right is a diverse lot that doesn't engage in attempts to enforce a party line while the left ruthlessly enforces its narrow-minded views, as if you never heard RINO, or know of the countless republicans who got primaried or just quit to avoid it, starting back in the tea party days. You seem to actually think Trump isn't as bad as he's seen by most non-MAGATs to be [excepting all the Russian BS] when anyone half-aware for the past 30+ years knows exactly who and what he is [grifter/con man], and it doesn't take fake news to see it, all you need do is listen to what he says. E.g., his usually quite open contempt for anyone not going along with whatever he says, and open calls for and obvious attempts to retaliate against violators. The fear of by far the majority of GOP to not cross Trump couldn't be more obvious, or pathetic, just look at Graham and Cruz FFS.
And worse, calling Schiff a pathological liar while quoting that odious toad Carlson about Trump losing tens of millions while president. Really? As if he hasn't engaged in massive tax fraud and is really the most honest president? If he lost millions while raking in the $$ exploiting the office, he's even more incredibly incompetent a businessman than was already apparent before becoming president. Does anyone know if Trump actually knows when he's lying?
I'm all for going after the left's recent and very lamentable resorting to dishonesty, to attacks on free speech, and even conspiracy theory nonsense, but they're just noobs compared to the GOP where this stuff is their bread and butter, honed to pro-levels by decades of practice. Maybe it's the attacks you've suffered due to your factual reporting, that doesn't excuse attacking the left with contrasting favorable views of the right when what the left is doing is essentially behaving exactly like the right has always behaved.
It was refreshing to listen to all the GOP debate that occurred during the Trump presidency. Oh wait that never happened. The second any Republican steps out of line, the party looks to throw a new candidate against them in the next primary.
This is pathetic how badly Greenwald turns a blind eye to the GOP. Rightfully criticize the Democrats as much as they deserve, but show a tiny bit of intellectual honesty when it comes to Republicans.
Sadly, we are condemned to a two party system which, some people argue, is really two competing groups within a single party dominated by corporate and wealthy interest groups - not unlike the AFC and NFC within the NFL. Instead of a democracy, our country has become a kleptocracy with people elected to public office having no concerns for the public welfare and concerns only for their own selfish interests. This is true for Republicans and Democrats alike and would probably be true for any politicians from any other political party.
I suspect that moral bankruptcy is a requirement for becoming a politician. Who else would want the job? Only those who seek power, influence and wealth compete for the job and most, if not all, will do anything to achieve their goal.
As an alternative, I have often proposed that, instead of electing our public officials, we draft them at random from the population excluding only those under 18 years of age and those who are institutionalized - pay them what we pay jurors serving jury duty - deny them all the perks of office enjoyed by our politicians - and compel them to serve a single 3 year term.
How could that possibly be any worse than what we have?
How did McConnel get so rich? Insider trading. In fact congress doesn't write laws. They lobbysists do.
All congress does is vote on how many trillions to counterfeit, who will get the counterfeit money, and then they inside trade, knowing where the counterfeit money will go. Some of the worst ones also launder some of the counterfeit back to their families and campaigns.
I was always a registered democrat and certainly have seen them become more conservative, less liberal in their policies through the years. Bill Clinton really shifted the party to the right and I was no longer happy with them, although I did vote for Gore, because of his position and concern on the issue of climate change. For various reasons I always thought the 2001 election was stolen. Although I voted for Obama and thought he would shift the party back to a more liberal stance, he didn't. The only one I've come across who feels he was no liberal is Jimmy Dore. For a long time many recognized they side lined their liberals and were more conservative, and less concerned with their base. During the Trump years they lost me forever, and not only because they tried to remove an elected president from office, and gave their continued support for our neo-liberal wars, but during the Trump years I saw them become very authoritarian. They all thought Trump was an illegitimate president and had to go. They tried to lie him out of office, and defined his base as a bunch of deplorables. No one who adopts that position is any kind of liberal. Their rigidity in this regard grew over a period of four years, and all stuck to the same Trump story and operated in lockstep. I saw the same thing happen to those who voted for the democrats, their base, and on CNN, and MSNBC as well. They have become more hateful, and more extreme. No wonder they demand full allegiance from their base, all authoritarians do.
Glenn, you wonderfully and informatively did it again. Nailed the truth about the both parties and their pitfalls as well as the savage lies in journalism that have led to the polarization and total mistrust of normal Americans for the msm. So disgusting. Personally I am glad to see the house members fighting for rule changes that are NOT insignificant. We, who are not in the elitist group, vote for common sense, moral integrity, and down to business rules that limit/stop big hidden selfish agendas (corruption). How is the msm media framing these arguments? A disaster, division, weakness? No, it is democracy in action. The Republican Party, like some members of Fox, just have more than one voice. As an independent for all my years, I think this is what our forefathers would want: Open debate. Sadly, the elite bureaucracy and mainstream media has no idea what that’s all about. But we have all heard you and many others blocking the din. Thanks for bringing us a clear view.
The story about your dad first realizing the media is in the business of lies - yeah, that's often how it starts. You notice an indefensible lie about something that you personally witnessed or were a part of. Not a mistake, not an error, but just a flat-out easily demonstrable lie.
And then you start listening when other people say the media lied about something they had personally witnessed or were a part of, and you see their stories often add up because it's really not that hard these days to find original sources and evidence if you're not terrified of wrongthink. And then you start to wonder, is any of it actually true? How could you know?
This is the thing about being a liar - once you establish yourself as liar, nobody will believe you even when telling the truth happens to serve your interests. We have no way of knowing whether you're telling the truth this time, because there's no presumption of trust.
So when a liar makes a claim, you have to assume you know nothing more than you did before other than "this is what this known liar wants me to believe". You can't know if they're lying or telling the truth without independently proving it.
That's my position on the media. When they say something I only know that they want me to think it's true. If it's something I care about then I have to go do the work of digging up original sources, looking for independent verification, checking whether it lines up with established fact, doing the math for myself. If only there was some sort of profession dedicated to doing this work for me...
Greenwald's stuff about the Twitter controversy over Andrew Tate adds little to this episode and would be better left out. Greenwald is complaining that a small number of mainstream journalist who mentioned Tate's presence on Rumble also tied Rumble to Greenwald in their tweets. But there is a substantial connection between Greenwald and Rumble. Greenwald is not only paid by Rumble but is in a sense Rumble's biggest advocate. And of the people with a Rumble show, Greenwald may be the best known in some sense -- Greenwald has even *designed* his Rumble show to attract attention in the circles where the topics debated on Twitter are followed. Still, Greenwald spends the last few minutes of this episode vituperating because a couple of reporters on Twitter called Rumble a "Peter Thiel and Glenn Greenwald Company" or "Glenn Greenwald and Peter Thiel's YouTube knockoff" -- it may not be exactly how he would like the connection between himself and Rumble described, but there is a genuine connection between Greenwald and Rumble and these Twitter descriptions are vague enough that they're arguably accurate. When Greenwald tries to twist this into Yet Another Proof That The Mainstream Media Lies, it's tedious because it's too centered on himself and too much a matter of subjective interpretation. Arguably these reporters did nothing wrong; Greenwald himself is not always quite as scrupulous about truth as I would like.
This kind of thing can reasonably stay on Twitter, and there's no need to stuff it in during the last few minutes of an episode of Greenwald's daily news video series.
Greenwald's partisan attachments keep him from taking a genuinely populist position on the House Speaker's race. The Speakership has developed into a highly anti-democratic institution, constantly pushing Congress's work more and more into the realm of backroom deals, welcoming the lack of transparency that favors shady legislative outcomes, and pressuring members of Congress to listen to those with influence in DC rather than their own voters back home. But even though the current drama over the Speaker's election is an excellent opportunity to strengthen the people's voice over DC insiders, Greenwald instead treats it as a chance to glorify the Republican party as a whole over the Democrats, and the Greene-Gaetz wing of Congressional Republicans over the current leadership wing. What we should be opposing, above all, is an outcome where the Speaker and his leadership team still retains most of the centralized power that insider Speakers like Pelosi have grabbed for themselves, and yet Greenwald refuses to clearly oppose it and it's still likely to happen.
Just look at what Greenwald is willing to praise here. He actually praises the "horse trading" process where Kevin McCarthy offers sweet deals to various rank-and-file Republicans so that they will put him into the exalted power of the Speakership. Of course a lot of this horse-trading between politicians involves hidden secret deals, and inevitably many of them will be shady, but Greenwald praises the horse-trading and says "That's how politics ought to work". He steers his readers away from wanting to make improvements in this corrupt closed-door process. I guess Greenwald feels that the horse-trading process may, for now, possibly give more power to what he sees as an "anti-establishment" faction of Republicans, so he's willing to overlook the corruption in the process if it empowers the faction he likes. Likewise, he tries to make his readers think that the bargaining with so-called "anti-establishment" federal politicians has a chance of leading to a good outcome. But he shouldn't be thinking about how to give leverage to politicians in a given faction, but rather about how to empower regular voters as opposed to DC power centers like the Speakership and shady DC deals.
A longtime ally of Greenwald's, ex-representative Justin Amash, has been offering the kind of constructive way forward here that Greenwald conspicuously avoids. Amash has offered himself as a candidate for Speaker (a position he's eligible for despite not being in Congress) and he does want to cut down the centralized power of the Speakership, in a way that's far more serious than anything Kevin McCarthy has been offering to people like Rep. Greene and Rep. Gaetz. He has pledged to let committees do their work without interference, allow any representative to amend bills from the floor without prescreening of the amendments, and make sure representatives have adequate time to review bills before voting. He's promised to refrain from regularly waiving or suspending the rules the way Pelosi did, and he'll push for single-issue bills. He writes "The House should work as an open, accountable, deliberative body that welcomes the participation of every representative, regardless of party. Any speaker who doesn’t run the House this way is perpetuating oligarchy, dysfunction, and hyperpartisanship." -- twitter.com/justinamash/status/1610350324568449024
That seems clearly right to me, but Greenwald can't stand up for it and instead just endorses horse-trading instead. Resting content with horse-trading, which is likely to end up giving the eventual Speaker something fairly close to the excessively powerful central authority that people like Pelosi had, is a recipe for more disaster. Greenwald should be more straight with us about how serious changes in the Speakership are necessary, just as Amash did in the tweet I cited. In fact, Greenwald knows that the current process where leadership can stop certain things from coming up for a vote leads to awful outcomes -- he even mentions that Bernie Sanders' Yemen resolution would likely be denied a vote not just by Kevin McCarthy, but by "Republicans" in general. But he never reaches the conclusion that should be obvious: we need major changes in the rules, more or less on the scale of at least the changes Amash talked about..
Greenwald used to praise Amash from time to time, but the last time he did so on Twitter was November 13, two days before Amash announced his run for Speaker.. Amash has consistently stood up for a lot of the values Greenwald thinks are important -- probably more so than any current member of Congress. And Amash's campaign for speaker has aroused some interest. But Greenwald doesn't put in a good word for him. I'm aware that Amash has been willing to condemn some of Trump's more serious wrongdoing which Greenwald has remained at best silent on, and I would say that this is a point in favor of Amash's integrity. But why doesn't Greenwald put in a good word, either for Amash himself as a candidate or for the kind of changes Amash advocated even apart from Amash's own candidacy? Is it partly because Amash's integrity led him to a different position on Trump? I don't know, but it sure looks like Greenwald is letting himself be induced, by Amash's distance from power, to downplay what Amash is saying -- and that doesn't feel far from journalistic corruption to me. Amash's integrity doesn't shine as brightly as it should in Greenwald's mind, nor does Amash's history as a fellow fighter for many good causes.
More broadly, I would say that Greenwald is falling into a version of one of the mainstream media's corrupt practices. When the mainstream media has to report on a voting process that takes a long time with lots of failed votes, their reflex is to praise it as if it's "democracy in action". What they should be doing, however, is to look at why the voting process isn't straightforward, and whether there's any shadiness that their readers should know about. Often when shadiness is going on, nothing of that shadiness is visible to viewers except for a series of failed votes, unless journalists look deeper. But I don't think Greenwald even wants to look much deeper into the deals that reps are seeking and being offered (often quite selfish ones). He's boosting a faction of power-seekers, and he's not advocating for a better process like someone who supports the people would.
> [Pelosi] wanted the appearance of bipartisanship without the annoyance of actual disagreement and thus herself put the easier to manipulate Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger on the committee as her Republican pets
I see -- when Republicans disagree with the GOP establishment, they're independent thinkers; but when they happen to agree with the Democrats but not with most of their own party, at grave risk to their careers in the House, they're Pelosi's "pets". Got it.
I cannot sign in to Rumble to read the comments there. I tried using the "Forgot your password?" button to reset my password (to the same one), but I still could not sign in. I don't think I ever registered on Rumble, but I'm a subscriber to Glenn's Substack site, and I thought subscribers got free access to his articles on Rumble. Any advice?
I mostly share Glenn's views regarding the DNC and mainstream media and appreciate both his anger and the reasons for it, though not his affection for Republicans. Remember, their signature achievement under The Donald's regime was a massive tax break for the rich.
But he sometimes lets his rhetoric get a bit out of control. Two examples from this posting:
1) Ms Green "is clearly one of the most influential, trusted, and respected members of Congress"? Is this the same person who
- Claimed “If you want to win the war on Christmas, first you take out the person who makes Christmas possible. As I speak, Jewish space lasers are being trained on the North Pole.”
- "Liked" the commment "a bullet to the head would be quicker" as a way of dealing with Ms Pelosi.
- Claimed George Soros is a Nazi.
- Seems to think some of California's wildfires were caused by beaming down solar energy from satellites. Jewish space lasers again?
2) While Ms Pelosi's neighborhood does have private security and there is in fact a gate at its entrance, I believe it is not a gated community in the sense of requiring ID to enter. It's also true Google Maps will not show you street views other than from right outside, presumably for security reasons. From the street outside it you can see there is no guard station so you can walk right through the gate.
Mainstream Media ("MSM") doesn't just lie about their political opponents. They lie to protect their allies. John Fetterman was the perfect example. Anyone who actually took the time to watch the debate against Oz could clearly see Fetterman has suffered severe cognitive impairment. Yet MSM aggressively reported that he was fine and to state the obvious was akin to attacking stroke victims. Some MSM outlets even declared Fetterman the winner.
MSM also viciously attacked one of their own - a reporter from NBC (Dasha Burns). Burns interviewed Fetterman with a lap top so he could read the questions, but she dared to report that Fetterman wasn't able to hold a simple unscripted conversation, prior to the interview. She was crucified by her colleagues for telling the truth and was actually branded a liar. That is next level gaslighting.
On the subject of journalistic lying, I long ago noticed a technique that is very frequently used. I suppose you could call it “headline deception.” It is ubiquitous. Does anyone know if this is taught as a deliberate propaganda technique in journalism schools, perhaps with more deceptive poetic name?
It starts with a half truth or outright lie in headlines of printed media. The article following begins by supporting the deception, then ends with a short paragraph that contains the truth. This allows
plausible deniability if the deception is exposed and becomes an issue. It spreads deception because almost nobody reads all the articles. Many false beliefs are implanted from searching the headlines.
@GlennG You yourself mentioned recently that traditional political labels are failing us. Ascribing 'free speech' to 'the Right' instead of it's traditional home on 'the Left' reinforces that as well as the decidedly illiberal behavior of Progressives in their support of censorship. This episode in the House leadership squabble reinforces that.
So long as we continue to support the traditional 'teams' we all lose. So let's lose the capital letters and move from noun to adjectives, perhaps. I'd love to hear/participate in a discussion of what characterizes the bulk of this nation and how we label it.
We need an viable alternative to Dems and Repubs. I think there is a yearning for equality, fairness, honesty, and a focus on people over institutions. That yearning I believe includes a swath of people that supercede today's labels.
I was always a registered democrat and certainly have seen them become more conservative, less liberal in their policies through the years. Bill Clinton really shifted the party to the right and I was no longer happy with them, although I did vote for Gore, because of his position and concern on the issue of climate change. For various reasons I always thought the 2001 election was stolen. Although I voted for Obama and thought he would shift the party back to a more liberal stance, he didn't. The only one I've come across who feels he was no liberal is Jimmy Dore. During the Trump years they lost me forever, and not only because they tried to remove an elected president from office, and gave their continued support for our neo-liberal wars, but during the Trump years I saw them become very authoritarian. They all thought Trump was an illegitimate president and had to go. No one who adopts that position is any kind of liberal. Their rigidity in this regard grew over a period of four years, and all stuck to the same Trump story operating in lockstep. I saw the same thing happened to those who voted for the democrats, their base, and on CNN, and MSNBC as well. They have become more hateful, and more extreme. No wonder they demand full allegiance from their base, all authoritarians do.
This really has gone too far. I don't know what's going on, whether it's the desire to increase your subscriber base or you've actually become a gullible fool for or a tool of the right/GOP. Going after what's become of the left is great, but trying to portray the right as if they're substantially better is beyond ludicrous. Here, you seem to to be saying the right is a diverse lot that doesn't engage in attempts to enforce a party line while the left ruthlessly enforces its narrow-minded views, as if you never heard RINO, or know of the countless republicans who got primaried or just quit to avoid it, starting back in the tea party days. You seem to actually think Trump isn't as bad as he's seen by most non-MAGATs to be [excepting all the Russian BS] when anyone half-aware for the past 30+ years knows exactly who and what he is [grifter/con man], and it doesn't take fake news to see it, all you need do is listen to what he says. E.g., his usually quite open contempt for anyone not going along with whatever he says, and open calls for and obvious attempts to retaliate against violators. The fear of by far the majority of GOP to not cross Trump couldn't be more obvious, or pathetic, just look at Graham and Cruz FFS.
And worse, calling Schiff a pathological liar while quoting that odious toad Carlson about Trump losing tens of millions while president. Really? As if he hasn't engaged in massive tax fraud and is really the most honest president? If he lost millions while raking in the $$ exploiting the office, he's even more incredibly incompetent a businessman than was already apparent before becoming president. Does anyone know if Trump actually knows when he's lying?
I'm all for going after the left's recent and very lamentable resorting to dishonesty, to attacks on free speech, and even conspiracy theory nonsense, but they're just noobs compared to the GOP where this stuff is their bread and butter, honed to pro-levels by decades of practice. Maybe it's the attacks you've suffered due to your factual reporting, that doesn't excuse attacking the left with contrasting favorable views of the right when what the left is doing is essentially behaving exactly like the right has always behaved.
It was refreshing to listen to all the GOP debate that occurred during the Trump presidency. Oh wait that never happened. The second any Republican steps out of line, the party looks to throw a new candidate against them in the next primary.
This is pathetic how badly Greenwald turns a blind eye to the GOP. Rightfully criticize the Democrats as much as they deserve, but show a tiny bit of intellectual honesty when it comes to Republicans.
Sadly, we are condemned to a two party system which, some people argue, is really two competing groups within a single party dominated by corporate and wealthy interest groups - not unlike the AFC and NFC within the NFL. Instead of a democracy, our country has become a kleptocracy with people elected to public office having no concerns for the public welfare and concerns only for their own selfish interests. This is true for Republicans and Democrats alike and would probably be true for any politicians from any other political party.
I suspect that moral bankruptcy is a requirement for becoming a politician. Who else would want the job? Only those who seek power, influence and wealth compete for the job and most, if not all, will do anything to achieve their goal.
As an alternative, I have often proposed that, instead of electing our public officials, we draft them at random from the population excluding only those under 18 years of age and those who are institutionalized - pay them what we pay jurors serving jury duty - deny them all the perks of office enjoyed by our politicians - and compel them to serve a single 3 year term.
How could that possibly be any worse than what we have?
How did McConnel get so rich? Insider trading. In fact congress doesn't write laws. They lobbysists do.
All congress does is vote on how many trillions to counterfeit, who will get the counterfeit money, and then they inside trade, knowing where the counterfeit money will go. Some of the worst ones also launder some of the counterfeit back to their families and campaigns.
I was always a registered democrat and certainly have seen them become more conservative, less liberal in their policies through the years. Bill Clinton really shifted the party to the right and I was no longer happy with them, although I did vote for Gore, because of his position and concern on the issue of climate change. For various reasons I always thought the 2001 election was stolen. Although I voted for Obama and thought he would shift the party back to a more liberal stance, he didn't. The only one I've come across who feels he was no liberal is Jimmy Dore. For a long time many recognized they side lined their liberals and were more conservative, and less concerned with their base. During the Trump years they lost me forever, and not only because they tried to remove an elected president from office, and gave their continued support for our neo-liberal wars, but during the Trump years I saw them become very authoritarian. They all thought Trump was an illegitimate president and had to go. They tried to lie him out of office, and defined his base as a bunch of deplorables. No one who adopts that position is any kind of liberal. Their rigidity in this regard grew over a period of four years, and all stuck to the same Trump story and operated in lockstep. I saw the same thing happen to those who voted for the democrats, their base, and on CNN, and MSNBC as well. They have become more hateful, and more extreme. No wonder they demand full allegiance from their base, all authoritarians do.
Glenn, you wonderfully and informatively did it again. Nailed the truth about the both parties and their pitfalls as well as the savage lies in journalism that have led to the polarization and total mistrust of normal Americans for the msm. So disgusting. Personally I am glad to see the house members fighting for rule changes that are NOT insignificant. We, who are not in the elitist group, vote for common sense, moral integrity, and down to business rules that limit/stop big hidden selfish agendas (corruption). How is the msm media framing these arguments? A disaster, division, weakness? No, it is democracy in action. The Republican Party, like some members of Fox, just have more than one voice. As an independent for all my years, I think this is what our forefathers would want: Open debate. Sadly, the elite bureaucracy and mainstream media has no idea what that’s all about. But we have all heard you and many others blocking the din. Thanks for bringing us a clear view.
The story about your dad first realizing the media is in the business of lies - yeah, that's often how it starts. You notice an indefensible lie about something that you personally witnessed or were a part of. Not a mistake, not an error, but just a flat-out easily demonstrable lie.
And then you start listening when other people say the media lied about something they had personally witnessed or were a part of, and you see their stories often add up because it's really not that hard these days to find original sources and evidence if you're not terrified of wrongthink. And then you start to wonder, is any of it actually true? How could you know?
This is the thing about being a liar - once you establish yourself as liar, nobody will believe you even when telling the truth happens to serve your interests. We have no way of knowing whether you're telling the truth this time, because there's no presumption of trust.
So when a liar makes a claim, you have to assume you know nothing more than you did before other than "this is what this known liar wants me to believe". You can't know if they're lying or telling the truth without independently proving it.
That's my position on the media. When they say something I only know that they want me to think it's true. If it's something I care about then I have to go do the work of digging up original sources, looking for independent verification, checking whether it lines up with established fact, doing the math for myself. If only there was some sort of profession dedicated to doing this work for me...
Greenwald's stuff about the Twitter controversy over Andrew Tate adds little to this episode and would be better left out. Greenwald is complaining that a small number of mainstream journalist who mentioned Tate's presence on Rumble also tied Rumble to Greenwald in their tweets. But there is a substantial connection between Greenwald and Rumble. Greenwald is not only paid by Rumble but is in a sense Rumble's biggest advocate. And of the people with a Rumble show, Greenwald may be the best known in some sense -- Greenwald has even *designed* his Rumble show to attract attention in the circles where the topics debated on Twitter are followed. Still, Greenwald spends the last few minutes of this episode vituperating because a couple of reporters on Twitter called Rumble a "Peter Thiel and Glenn Greenwald Company" or "Glenn Greenwald and Peter Thiel's YouTube knockoff" -- it may not be exactly how he would like the connection between himself and Rumble described, but there is a genuine connection between Greenwald and Rumble and these Twitter descriptions are vague enough that they're arguably accurate. When Greenwald tries to twist this into Yet Another Proof That The Mainstream Media Lies, it's tedious because it's too centered on himself and too much a matter of subjective interpretation. Arguably these reporters did nothing wrong; Greenwald himself is not always quite as scrupulous about truth as I would like.
This kind of thing can reasonably stay on Twitter, and there's no need to stuff it in during the last few minutes of an episode of Greenwald's daily news video series.
Greenwald's partisan attachments keep him from taking a genuinely populist position on the House Speaker's race. The Speakership has developed into a highly anti-democratic institution, constantly pushing Congress's work more and more into the realm of backroom deals, welcoming the lack of transparency that favors shady legislative outcomes, and pressuring members of Congress to listen to those with influence in DC rather than their own voters back home. But even though the current drama over the Speaker's election is an excellent opportunity to strengthen the people's voice over DC insiders, Greenwald instead treats it as a chance to glorify the Republican party as a whole over the Democrats, and the Greene-Gaetz wing of Congressional Republicans over the current leadership wing. What we should be opposing, above all, is an outcome where the Speaker and his leadership team still retains most of the centralized power that insider Speakers like Pelosi have grabbed for themselves, and yet Greenwald refuses to clearly oppose it and it's still likely to happen.
Just look at what Greenwald is willing to praise here. He actually praises the "horse trading" process where Kevin McCarthy offers sweet deals to various rank-and-file Republicans so that they will put him into the exalted power of the Speakership. Of course a lot of this horse-trading between politicians involves hidden secret deals, and inevitably many of them will be shady, but Greenwald praises the horse-trading and says "That's how politics ought to work". He steers his readers away from wanting to make improvements in this corrupt closed-door process. I guess Greenwald feels that the horse-trading process may, for now, possibly give more power to what he sees as an "anti-establishment" faction of Republicans, so he's willing to overlook the corruption in the process if it empowers the faction he likes. Likewise, he tries to make his readers think that the bargaining with so-called "anti-establishment" federal politicians has a chance of leading to a good outcome. But he shouldn't be thinking about how to give leverage to politicians in a given faction, but rather about how to empower regular voters as opposed to DC power centers like the Speakership and shady DC deals.
A longtime ally of Greenwald's, ex-representative Justin Amash, has been offering the kind of constructive way forward here that Greenwald conspicuously avoids. Amash has offered himself as a candidate for Speaker (a position he's eligible for despite not being in Congress) and he does want to cut down the centralized power of the Speakership, in a way that's far more serious than anything Kevin McCarthy has been offering to people like Rep. Greene and Rep. Gaetz. He has pledged to let committees do their work without interference, allow any representative to amend bills from the floor without prescreening of the amendments, and make sure representatives have adequate time to review bills before voting. He's promised to refrain from regularly waiving or suspending the rules the way Pelosi did, and he'll push for single-issue bills. He writes "The House should work as an open, accountable, deliberative body that welcomes the participation of every representative, regardless of party. Any speaker who doesn’t run the House this way is perpetuating oligarchy, dysfunction, and hyperpartisanship." -- twitter.com/justinamash/status/1610350324568449024
That seems clearly right to me, but Greenwald can't stand up for it and instead just endorses horse-trading instead. Resting content with horse-trading, which is likely to end up giving the eventual Speaker something fairly close to the excessively powerful central authority that people like Pelosi had, is a recipe for more disaster. Greenwald should be more straight with us about how serious changes in the Speakership are necessary, just as Amash did in the tweet I cited. In fact, Greenwald knows that the current process where leadership can stop certain things from coming up for a vote leads to awful outcomes -- he even mentions that Bernie Sanders' Yemen resolution would likely be denied a vote not just by Kevin McCarthy, but by "Republicans" in general. But he never reaches the conclusion that should be obvious: we need major changes in the rules, more or less on the scale of at least the changes Amash talked about..
Greenwald used to praise Amash from time to time, but the last time he did so on Twitter was November 13, two days before Amash announced his run for Speaker.. Amash has consistently stood up for a lot of the values Greenwald thinks are important -- probably more so than any current member of Congress. And Amash's campaign for speaker has aroused some interest. But Greenwald doesn't put in a good word for him. I'm aware that Amash has been willing to condemn some of Trump's more serious wrongdoing which Greenwald has remained at best silent on, and I would say that this is a point in favor of Amash's integrity. But why doesn't Greenwald put in a good word, either for Amash himself as a candidate or for the kind of changes Amash advocated even apart from Amash's own candidacy? Is it partly because Amash's integrity led him to a different position on Trump? I don't know, but it sure looks like Greenwald is letting himself be induced, by Amash's distance from power, to downplay what Amash is saying -- and that doesn't feel far from journalistic corruption to me. Amash's integrity doesn't shine as brightly as it should in Greenwald's mind, nor does Amash's history as a fellow fighter for many good causes.
More broadly, I would say that Greenwald is falling into a version of one of the mainstream media's corrupt practices. When the mainstream media has to report on a voting process that takes a long time with lots of failed votes, their reflex is to praise it as if it's "democracy in action". What they should be doing, however, is to look at why the voting process isn't straightforward, and whether there's any shadiness that their readers should know about. Often when shadiness is going on, nothing of that shadiness is visible to viewers except for a series of failed votes, unless journalists look deeper. But I don't think Greenwald even wants to look much deeper into the deals that reps are seeking and being offered (often quite selfish ones). He's boosting a faction of power-seekers, and he's not advocating for a better process like someone who supports the people would.
> [Pelosi] wanted the appearance of bipartisanship without the annoyance of actual disagreement and thus herself put the easier to manipulate Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger on the committee as her Republican pets
I see -- when Republicans disagree with the GOP establishment, they're independent thinkers; but when they happen to agree with the Democrats but not with most of their own party, at grave risk to their careers in the House, they're Pelosi's "pets". Got it.
Come on, Glenn, you can do better than this.
I cannot sign in to Rumble to read the comments there. I tried using the "Forgot your password?" button to reset my password (to the same one), but I still could not sign in. I don't think I ever registered on Rumble, but I'm a subscriber to Glenn's Substack site, and I thought subscribers got free access to his articles on Rumble. Any advice?
I mostly share Glenn's views regarding the DNC and mainstream media and appreciate both his anger and the reasons for it, though not his affection for Republicans. Remember, their signature achievement under The Donald's regime was a massive tax break for the rich.
But he sometimes lets his rhetoric get a bit out of control. Two examples from this posting:
1) Ms Green "is clearly one of the most influential, trusted, and respected members of Congress"? Is this the same person who
- Claimed “If you want to win the war on Christmas, first you take out the person who makes Christmas possible. As I speak, Jewish space lasers are being trained on the North Pole.”
- "Liked" the commment "a bullet to the head would be quicker" as a way of dealing with Ms Pelosi.
- Claimed George Soros is a Nazi.
- Seems to think some of California's wildfires were caused by beaming down solar energy from satellites. Jewish space lasers again?
2) While Ms Pelosi's neighborhood does have private security and there is in fact a gate at its entrance, I believe it is not a gated community in the sense of requiring ID to enter. It's also true Google Maps will not show you street views other than from right outside, presumably for security reasons. From the street outside it you can see there is no guard station so you can walk right through the gate.
Mainstream Media ("MSM") doesn't just lie about their political opponents. They lie to protect their allies. John Fetterman was the perfect example. Anyone who actually took the time to watch the debate against Oz could clearly see Fetterman has suffered severe cognitive impairment. Yet MSM aggressively reported that he was fine and to state the obvious was akin to attacking stroke victims. Some MSM outlets even declared Fetterman the winner.
MSM also viciously attacked one of their own - a reporter from NBC (Dasha Burns). Burns interviewed Fetterman with a lap top so he could read the questions, but she dared to report that Fetterman wasn't able to hold a simple unscripted conversation, prior to the interview. She was crucified by her colleagues for telling the truth and was actually branded a liar. That is next level gaslighting.