An unholy union of the National Security State and the neocon-backed and corporate-funded Democratic Party are about to assume power: with media-supported internet censorship a key weapon.
Agreed! Watching Glenn last night with Jimmy Dore crackling with palpable energy! Also evident was a noticeable joy from just being Glenn Greenwald again. Free from anyone’s journalistic or editorial influences. We his readers and those exposed to his writing are better for his new chapter.
Agreed. Ever since then I’ve been reading, listening (Red Scare, Useful Idiots) to everything you’re doing – whatever reason it seems that these questions surrounding power are being tied together more clearly now. This piece in particular is incredibly powerful. Happy to have the opportunity to thank you (thank you).
I have always voted Republican and I am 100% Trump...worked on the campaign. I hate liberals, AOC and Pelosi. I hate reporters and CNN. However I respect Glenn Greenwald and his work. Usually I tell people the news should be free and I will never pay one dollar for an NYTimes article. This time I bought a subscription here for $50. Glenn Greenwald might be the only newsman I ever give my $$$ to...
Who cares why people choose their news sources? You can sit around analyzing the people that you clearly "don't like", continuing to foster the division that is a real problem, or you can at the very least keep this particular opinion to yourself, and help the world, in the process.
There is a basic question: is Trump (and his popularity in specific classes, genders, races, regions, etc.) "the problem", or a symptom of some deeper problem?
And if there is a deeper problem, how can a social and political consensus, across parties (transcending the left-vs-right narrative) be formed to describe that problem, and then solve it?
Historically, americans have been at their best when solving problems, not creating them.
The ruling elites (Deep State, Wall St. the military-industrial-complex) have become arrogant and uninterested in the problems of the working classes and increasingly large parts of the middle class.
The corporate media and the other service industries that reflexively genuflect to the ruling elites, gain power and wealth by selling out the working classes.
I'm a trump/conservative republican latching onto Glenn because although I disagree seriously with most of his policy ideas, I agree with him culturally. And, he seems to be for truth, which is what matters. Even if, again, I don't agree with him on policy, which is why I'm glad he's not a politician, and is bucking the norms and going against a party that may be a proponent for his own political agenda. GO GLENN
I too have always voted republican but I subscribed to Glenn's substack the day it was announced. I also subscribe to Matt Taibi's site and I have been watching Jimmy Dore's youtube videos for a number of months. I bet I would disagree with just about everything those three say regarding domestic policy. But the three of them are taking on what is clearly the most pressing issue of the day - the new ruling coalition as Glenn calls it. I have come to the conclusion that the FBI and CIA need to be completely disbanded - as in everyone fired and the buildings emptied out. When the agencies that were created to supposedly safeguard our freedom actively work to overthrow the elected leader of the country, then THEY are the problem. No amount of "reforms" or "re-training" will remove the rot at the core of those two agencies. I've had enough of the talk about how the low level FBI agents are all virtuous and we only need to get new management. Their were 40 agents assigned to Mueller's witch hunt and none of them had the integrity to question, leak or even resign? It's quite possible the intelligence agencies of this country are the biggest threat to its freedom. With their allies in the press looking to increase censorship going forward I think it is more important than ever to have people like Glenn and Matt write freely.
Historically the problem originated further back, it is rooted in the disruption caused by the industrial revolution, the Spanish-American war (1898), then after WW1, the disruptions caused by the invention of global supply chain logistics.
All of those events caused an increase in concentration of wealth and power and an increase in the "imperialistic" nature of the USA in the world. It was inevitable that a "hidden govt" (Deep State) would come to be given that the original Constitution did not anticipate the need to govern and regulate a global empire. (see Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience")
FDR's New deal and related policies (legalization of labor unions) was a boon for about a generation, but by the 1960s the economy was well on its way to being suburban and consumer. Not family farms, not blue collar factory jobs.
The collapse of the middle class economy eventually showed up as a collapse of the social and cultural middle. Traditions were abandoned. Technology disruption magnified the resulting cultural fragmentation and atomization. The fragmentation made it easy for the ruling elites to "divide and conquer".
If you got anything out of reading this article, it should be that there is no "Republican establishment" or "Democratic establishment". There is simply the establishment. And when the cameras go off and the Kabuki theater is over, Pelosi and Mcconnell fist bump each other and retire to their respective mansions to eat $60 ice cream and laugh at the plebes who sop it up.
I believe his stance is much more nuanced than you give him credit for. He calls it on both sides as he sees it, not bound to any ideology. If more people chose policy over party we’d have a better functioning republic. Sadly, both sides engage in fear mongering to gain power and its corrosive.
Just like steroids and diet pills fear mongering works...and just like steroids and diet pills its not good for you. Just as long as we know its fear mongering we will be ok...but I dont know about everyone else....
I think Glenn listed the groups he is most concerned with in this article which are: hawkish and corporatist Democrats, pro war/neocon Republicans, Bush/Cheney operatives, the national security state and large corporate media outlets. Biden is a corporatist hawkish Democrat. Glenn isnt being critical of the Democrats as a whole...just those specific groups. The Trump Republicans are not hawks, they have this concept of the deep state, they hate Bush, and despise corporate news...and I think Glenn can agree with those qualities. The part which Glenn is not in agreement with is just about everything else about Trump. I will agree Trump is outside of the usual norms and takes a bit of getting used to. Thats the part which isnt compatible with some people.
1. censorship, violations of the 1st amendment (free speech)
2. throwing working class people under the bus for 50 years
3. political correctness and bizarre SJW narratives that are out of touch with reality
In each of those cases, the D and R wings of the establishment are engaged in a toxic war against working class people, and increasingly on middle class people (as the middle class collapses).
Make no mistake. I am a free thinking individual and not a member of a cult. I read through the articles and agree&disagree at my pleasure...and I do that with everything in life. While masks were made political I decided early on I needed a supply of N95 masks and so got a pile of them here. A lot of people say a lot of things but I ultimately decide whats best for myself. As for the article I can agree&disagree on some parts but I can still be a fan of Glenn...
I gave up on Identifying players by their Jerseys 35 years ago. Glenn's article is objective. For nearly 60 years, Classical Liberals were marginalized in the Democratic Party, and Constitutional Conservatives were marginalized in the GOP. The balance of Collectivists in each party have now joined, and it's in plain sight. Trump is a catalyst and has emerged as a leader, but the underlying conditions have nothing to do with him.
He can still believe what he believes and support Glenn in his mission to expose the establishment. Two things can be true, and they don't have to be on the same "side". Diversity in thought is good
As another commenter mentioned previously (h/t SimulationCommander), a gift subscription would be an awesome Holiday present. I can think of few who need something more important than what is provided here by Glenn. The whole populace would benefit.
I've been saying for years that media needs to change drastically, (I thought that crypto would be the answer) and now it's time to put our money where our mouths are. Disconnect (as much as you can) from big media and support individuals reporting the truth.
THANK YOU for calling out the bullshit. I find it endlessly frustrating that more people can't see through it, and reading your column helps me feel less isolated and alone.
When I was a child their were lots of cowboy and Indian movies, and although it was clear the cowboys were stealing land from the Indians they were still the good guys. I would ask grown ups how come., and of course there was never an answer, which was probably better then lying to me. Since I was a child my uncle would tell me that people will say, write and declare they're making statements of truth, but it is up to me to prove whether it is truth they are telling, or lies. So from a very young age I knew that sometimes my government told me lies, and I can't ever remember trusting them, or the media. Not that they always lied, but I knew they were very capable of it. Children are taught to trust what parents and teachers and adults say, so they have learned not to question authority, and therefore are easily manipulated. I'm not against religion, but in this regard it doesn't help either to encourage blind faith. Yes you can see how the media manipulates and controls and too often are not purveyors of truth, but we have been groomed to be almost willing victims of their lies. For me, they used Trump to encourage a mindlessness using hate as their tool, and not only to hate him, but the deplorables who were his followers. He was perceived even demonic enough to have killed every person who died of Covid-19. They encouraged black and white thinking, with no shades of grey. The media seemed like a cult, and it was amazing how blindly people followed. Now they would have you believe that the devil is now gone, and the messiah, in the form of Joe Biden, a notorious liar, has become our savior. I think we have been heading in this direction for a very long time. Trump just help them out to speed things along.
It seems that once a child is taught and encouraged to believe what they want to believe in spite of evidence and common sense, the classic examples being Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, their critical thinking skills--to the extent they develop at all--will likely always be subordinated to their own emotional biases. Even well meaning and seemingly benign and innocent lies have a corrosive effect on one's ability to perceive reality as it is as opposed to what one wishes it to be. And so we have become a nation of easily led children.
Not that I think the new emperor's clothes aren't absolutely fabulous, of course.
Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are necessary precursors to a modern liberal arts indoctrination, er, "education". Wish fulfillment becomes superior to objective reality.
Sentence fragments and emojis are quite suitable, on the other hand, for those who, like you, express their most profound thoughts exclusively through their thumbs. The extraneous commas, like the other shiny objects you find so attractive, are a bit pretentious, though. You should probably stick with fart jokes and the doo-doo icon for greater clarity.
Good day. Enjoy "owning" me with your final witty riposte, which you will no doubt post shortly.
Yesterday, when I heard about Trump trying to pull troops out of Afghanistan on the radio and THEN heard some talking-head idiot at NPR argue we should STAY AT WAR there, I knew we were already fallen down the rabbit hole of a dystopian Alice's Wonderland.
It was also instantly obvious to me, what Glenn points out here:
"One can find it right now in the ongoing effort to denounce the Trump White House for attempting to remove troops from Afghanistan, where the U.S. has been fighting and shooting and bombing in a war now about to enter its 20th year. Take a look at who is demanding that those troops remain, and there you will find the real axis of power — all of its component parts — in the United States."
Yep, EVERY mouth that says we should leave troops in Afghanistan is an enemy of The People, and a servant of the MI(L)C (the L is for _legislative_), no doubt about that.
If we've learned anything over the last 4 years, its that the overwhelming majority of Americans lack the capacity to think critically. Whether you look at the Russiagate conspiracy nonsense or the Qanon whisperings, a huge number of Americans exist very much like little sponges, waiting to soak up whatever propaganda is spewed upon them. The formula is straightforward - simply ensure that the propaganda that is being disseminated is grounded in a narrative that people want to hear.
Which brings us to the problem, which is twofold:
First, those who have been brainwashed by propaganda that affirms and supports their desires are very resistant to "deprogramming". They don't want to hear that their empty heads have been filled with propaganda. Nobody likes to admit they have been fooled, least of all those who aren't prone to (or, in many cases, capable of) thinking critically. Moreover, many of these people have spent years forming their entire social network and worldview around the nonsense they have absorbed. There are real social and economic costs for many of these people if they want to "leave the church" and embrace objective reality, which is just another disincentive to do so, even if they were otherwise inclined.
The other problem is that even if you somehow manage to replace the propaganda in the mind of a zealot with reality-based information, the susceptibility for future brainwashing remains. It isn't enough to simply replace the bad information with good information if the goal is to prevent a similar, future outcome. Its necessary to imbue people with the ability to thinking critically and be necessarily skeptical in all things, in order to immunize them (at least to some degree) against future brainwashing - which is a much higher barrier to hurdle then simply countering the disinformation they have previously absorbed.
Stanislav, Well said! Adding to this are several critical psychological supports for the Good-hearted Liberal Zealot:
1) "Moral Authority" -- the Democratic Party traditionally held itself out as the "conscience of the nation." Adherents to "sharing the wealth" through additional funding for social programs see the DP's moral authority over "greed-head" Republicans. That Republicans are "racist" is natural conclusion along this line of logic:
- Republicans hate taxes.
- Republicans hate lazy poor people who use up tax money.
- A very high percentile of the poor are non-white.
- Therefore Republicans want to deny social programs to non-whites.
- Ergo Republicans are "racist."
2) "Virtue": Since The Good-Hearted Liberal holds moral authority over the nasty, self-centered Republican -- and is willing to put his money where his mouth is -- it is impossible that he is "racist," therefore he is Virtuous.
This self-regarding feeling of Virtue, once fully metastasized, cannot be threatened in any way -- certainly not by the truth.
This is how the East Coast Establishment's organs have absorbed "lefty" brains from the top universities, how all manner of evil is rationalized by the messianic Intelligence actors, and why the mounting "Left wing" fascist fraud enjoys such fervent support from the wealthy on both coasts.
The establishment's collective sense making system (modern rationalism) is what created most of the industrial and postindustrial world, like it or not, so it was capable of coherently functioning for a long time (classical liberalism began to emerge as early as the 1200s-1300s).
Setting nitpicking over timelines aside, the shift to a suburban consumer economy after WW2, from family farms and factory work, and then the abandonment of traditional values began the shift to postmodern deconstructive nihilism and neoliberalism.
Globalism, neoliberalism and offshoring of working and middle class jobs was a massive departure from the historical norm.
As the economic middle collapsed in the USA, the cultural and political middle collapsed.
Then tech disruption, network effects (shared learning), made the old sense making system, the Blue Church, hierarchies of curated expertise, broadcast modes of information sharing (classrooms, TV, etc.), increasingly irrelevant.
What you grossly overlook is the huge fraction who have "tuned out", for various reasons, and therefore come to errant conclusions.
You're not wrong that many lack the capacity to think critically (and don't even know that that expression even means, thinking that it is about criticizing people), but your error is in presuming that just because a sizable group has behaved badly that it's therefore an "overwhelming majority."
I can also agree that far too many are "brainwashed" via propaganda.
I think your basic "prescription" is a better educated populace and on that I wholeheartedly agree.
I suggest you think again on some of your points about just who it is you're actually speaking about and avoid over-generalizing to the whole population.
They are winning and it is breaking the minds of intelligent people. I had a conversation with a friend that is conservative but voted for Biden. The bounty story was the primary reason. He also shared that Trump's following reveals that we have many more racist hate groups we have in our country. He doesn't think Trump will leave on Jan 20th! These examples show how successful propaganda narratives are. None of the MSM talking heads believe Trump won't depart but over the next 60 days they will beat it into submission only to never mention it again after he is gone.
I am very concerned at the total lack of skeptics in the media. They joyfully accept the left's position on everything and advance it. They willing cover for corporate giants in all industries with few exceptions. We have less shared reality today than in the past and it is only getting worse. When the mass of people have no trust in the media and institutions the conditions are set for disaster.
I appreciate your work and willingness to say what is true.
"(Top military officials and the commander in Afghanistan later admitted the bounty program “had not been corroborated by intelligence agencies and that they do not believe any attacks in Afghanistan that resulted in American casualties can be directly tied to it,” but by then, the job was done)."
--from Glenn's article above.
Notice how the admission that there were no casualties tied to the alleged bounty implicitly affirms that the bounty story itself is true?
It isn't.
It was a complete fabrication from beginning to end. It never happened. But a lot of people who think they're smart and informed are wandering around this planet with this lie in their heads, because of exactly this kind of climbdown.
What is scary is that the people passing along this narrative know it is false. They agree with the action of hurting Trump so much that they will support any action based upon a false narrative, including a possible war with Russia, staying in Afghanistan, etc. to hurt the Orange Man.
Yeah, I would recommend that book he cites — the Chomsky one. Manufacturing Consent. Although you could skim most of of it and get the picture.
What's weird is that once we've agreed on that and opened the blinds — what do we actually agree on? Who knows. The tensions are still there, no matter how false in origin.
Saw a spooky article in NYT today (a pub which I recommend you all read at least once every other day because that's what critics of media ought to be doing):
"A former Obama aide, Tommy Vietor, recently advised Mr. Biden to focus on going directly to social media and to work closely with friendly left-leaning online outlets. “Give them scoops and access,” he wrote, “and grow their audiences and influence the way Trump’s team has nurtured fringe rags like Newsmax and OAN,” a reference to One America News." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/22/business/media/joe-biden.html
This is just how the info-grift system works, but it's so much more BORING than a centralized conspiracy of DEMS or GOP running some show — rather, factions among different industry sectors broker stories based on clicks and traffic. Boringgggg. But wouldn't that innocuous-looking system be much more nefarious than one with an outward propaganda system?
The media can't tax or imprison ppl. They don't make laws, enforce laws, or interpret laws. Political parties, on the other hand, run for office to do just that. The media only controls you if you surrender all skepticism & critical thinking to blindly accept whatever they're telling you.
2016 was a weird event, but there is a lot of disruptive stuff that emerged from deeper levels to defeat Hillary, just as in this election, 2020, that stuff emerged to drive D party losses in the House of Representatives and a lack of success in the Senate.
The "establishment" (Deep State, etc.) is not adapting very well to such disruption because the weirdness results from dysfunction in the information ecosystem (collective sense making apparatus).
Trumpism is about leveraging disruptive network effects that have caused the establishment to rot internally and start cracking apart and weaken.
I, for one, welcome being censored. It allows me to become a free thinker since I am safe in the knowledge that should I make an error of judgment, it will be expunged from the record, and no lasting damage will be done.
We all make mistakes and it is nice to know that when we do, there is a safety net to arrest our fall. Having a safety net gives you more freedom to experiment and develop, not less. Censorship is necessary so that people have freedom to express themselves.
Self-censorship is the most onerous kind of censorship. For the writer, being censored externally frees them from the responsibility to self-censor. They can indulge their full creativity. Their output may ultimately be censored, but they still have the satisfaction of knowing they produced imaginative work without constraints. This is worth the price of spending the rest of your life in prison.
hahahahaha. I find a great analogy for rational of "preemptive war" in this post. Most excellent. We must start a war to prevent a war, we must also welcome censorship for the sake of free expression. Well done. Good one.
Glad I’m paying $5 per month for this; completely unaware of the facts re: the pro- war stance of the NYT article on Russian bounties and the pro-war bipartisanship of the Armed Services Committee. Fascinating and disturbing. I’m re-thinking a lot of assumptions I’ve made over the years.
Bravo, Glenn. Love him or hate him, and I harbor both emotions at once, Trump is the last independent who will ever get within sniffing distance of real power in this country. That is my takeaway from 2016 till today. The Borg did indeed learn their lesson, despite what leftists say about Dems failing to learn correctly. They learned only too well. Keep up the good fight, while the light sputters out in our world.
But the Trump presidency ensures that more bait and switch messiahs on white horses will be held out to the voters, and the voters will snap at them as they did with Trump.
Obama.
Reagan.
Carter.
Left messiah, right messiah, left messiah, right messiah.
Obama lost a lot of voters to Trump. Trump lost a lot of voters to Biden. That pattern will presumably continue when people learn just how dismal and horrible Biden/Harris really are.
There are some really insane factions within Trumpism, but if the sane elements can minimize the influence of the crazies and put forward some concrete reforms in favor of working people (keep the border "closed", reformulate "bad trade deals", bring manufacturing back, etc.), the R party could be revived and regain some credibility in the "middle".
I noticed this a while ago. It has been accelerated by Trump.
What we are seeing is further alignment between neoliberals and neoconservatives. Both believe strongly in globalization: global labor and trade markets. Both neoliberals and neocon believe in the use of American power as a form of preemptive (or as Gabbard would say "regime change") global positioning wars.
If you think about Biden and his voting record on trade deals, the globalization of labor (read cheap labor), WTO, bank deregulation, etc.- Biden is essentially a "kinda" pro choice W Bush, who wants some gun control.
The separation between Neolib and Neocon is miniscule.
I agree with everything that Glenn has written here, but as my high school English teacher would no doubt say, this article is too long and repetitive. Glenn’s mind is full of facts and good ideas, but he needs a decent editor.
Just so there's no confusion: I've been writing without an editor for 15 years. The attempt to edit my article on Hunter Biden materials was a huge and very rare exception, which is why I called it censorship, because it was motivated by political, not editorial, concerns. Of course there are benefits to spending days going back and forth with an editor to polish every word -- I do that for my books -but there are huge downsides, such as removing the passion, flattening the voice, imposing uniform tone, slowing debates down considerably, and subjecting oneself to the perspectives and biases of others. Most journalists write within a very structured organization and hierarchy of editors and while no one method is perfect or universally preferable, I think those who have written and reported independently have done a much better job over the last two decades. But again: despite the attention on the "editor" issue precipitated by my leaving TI, the way I'm writing here is how I've written for the past 15 years - at Salon, the Guardian and the Intercept. There's nothing different.
I've been teaching HS English in the Bad Neighborhood for the past 25 years, so the level of detail and explanation sent me into a wonderful place where there are no red pens.......
Hey Glen, I think I have a scoop for you. I have been watching Robert Barnes podcast, he is one of the trump lawyers, who got pushed out by Powell, and will likely be back in the fight this week. He seems to think the reason that no one wants the recounts to happen, both Republican and Democrat, is that it will expose how AWFUL the signature verification system is in the USA, and that it is way worse than anyone believes. That its basically impossible to match in as high as 50 percent of cases, and thats why no one wants to the recounts to go forward.
I dont know if you will see this, but I thought it might be of interest.
For medical-orthopedic reasons my cursive signature is "bad" and I have to get signed documents, such as surrender of retirement funds, notarized.
According to your "logic" my vote would be considered bad (to vote in-person i still had to sign a document, but NOT show picture ID! lol), or at least require an elaborate, time consuming, expensive appeals/corrective process which itself would result in considerable vote suppression.
Dude I live in Canada. We have such rules, their is absolutely no difference in turnout after the laws for voter id were passed. Having a voter id card, or a drivers license is easy.
As to going to a vote station to vote. My grandfather landed on the beaches of Normandy in 1944. The least I can do is go and vote at the voting station.
Dont like signature validation? Do what the Canadian conservative party does, we have to send a photocopy of government issued id along. Its not hard.
Stuff that happened in the USA this election is a ridiculous joke.
I personally have no problem with voter ID, I'm just pointing out that signatures vary a LOT, making accurate high speed computer processing technologically problematic.
But to your point, yes, my late wife, a Spanish national, was astonished the first time she saw me vote here in the USA, and I told her no ID was required. It is probably normal in most of the world to require ID to vote. That is what every body in those countries is used to (but not most of the USA).
The fact is that the USA is orders of magnitude larger and more complex than Canada, it has 50 different voting systems, one per state, and in many of those states (rural, poor), the bureaucracy and political apparatus is not capable of taking on change rapidly.
The left is making most of the noise about voter suppression ("by Republicans"), in poor communities, including rural black communities in the south, where "race" is used as a hyper toxic political propaganda tool.
Texas seems to be a good counter-example, a Republican-sponsored state law limited in-person voting (or maybe mail-ballot drop offs?) to one site per county. Given that there are very large counties, some with high populations of poor people, that seemed incredibly absurd, especially when Texas is tending toward "purple" status.
Glenn, thanks for your reply. To be clear, I have been a devoted reader of your work since the early Salon days. Needless to say, I agree with most of what you write and appreciate that you support your opinions with empiric evidence and strong logic. My criticism regards only your writing style, which I find to be long-winded and repetitive. Good writing, IMO, is tight and concise. An editor could focus only on stylistic matters, not content. That would be their sole assignment, and you, of course, would have final say over any changes they might suggest.
Though I do not expect you to change the way that you work, I will continue reading your articles, as long as they remain as trenchant and thoughtful as they have always been..
I like long form. Often, that includes context, and emotional connotations that often add considerable value.
In a more basic level, I prefer it because I always know I am getting Glenn, and anyone else writing freely, rather than an distillation some other person believed I am somehow better off with their intervention as opposed to my own thoughts.
Think basic signature check.
Given the coming authoritarian environment, I believe these ideas have considerable merit.
I skimmed it then re-read it quickly a couple of days ago, and just read the whole article more carefully. It was fine.
I read this/below linked article earlier today, seemed at least 10 times longer, excellent article, but contains more fluff than I needed to read. (I had read the earlier parts of the Slotnik story, how a creative, smart centrist Democrat in the midwest in a voting district that went for Trump twice, struggles to keep her party, the govt, her voting district and the USA in general from flying apart at the seams.)
A good editor would ask him to take out the part about the re-alignment of political factions. It is speculative and bolstered only by unreliable anecdotal evidence. Where is the randomized, double blind study that confirms his hypothesis?
Since Mr. Greenwald flew the coop @ TI I've been doing a randomized double blind study of news media editors (as distinct from book editors etc., etc.). The most successful newsroom editors would have cited; According to anonymous officials requesting anonymity speaking off the record with sources familiar with the matter.
*a good editor would gently suggest he take out the part about re-alignment of political factions.
Mr. Greenwald is attacking the integrity of the political system. That is an extraordinary claim.
Extraordinary claims require anonymous sources to make them credible and as you point out, any good editor would know this. Mr. Greenwald tends to believe his own eyes, which is a rookie mistake in the world of journalism.
As cogently described by Frank Chu in his complaint that Bill Clinton stole Mr. Chu's Hollywood movie pay from the entertainment favored by trillions of sentient being in the "12 Galaxies", the DNC is clearly being remotely mind-controlled by illegal alien pod people spores orbiting on the dark side of Uranus. The spores cleverly infected the Pope's long underwear at the US-Mexico border and then from there, moved into Trump's tinfoil hat and then Rudy Giuliani's hair dye.
It is incredibly obvious to those with secret bar-b-q cannibal sauce that all of the randomized, double blind research data was sent into occultation by the illegal alien pod people spores that have been orbiting on the dark side of Uranus after being prepared by the same nefarious 12 Galaxies forces that Frank Chu has been protesting since Bill Clinton stole Chu's universally popular off-world movies.
Glenn I sense a new level of conviction and energy since leaving The Intercept and for this I am grateful. Keep it up, we need your voice.
Agreed! Watching Glenn last night with Jimmy Dore crackling with palpable energy! Also evident was a noticeable joy from just being Glenn Greenwald again. Free from anyone’s journalistic or editorial influences. We his readers and those exposed to his writing are better for his new chapter.
I only caught the very tail end of the Jimmy Dore interview. I'm hoping he will put up a video so I can see it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_xmYwr6qt8
Isn't most of Dore's stuff on his facebook account?
I liked the swearing on the Jimmy Dire show.
Made me feel like I was back in the Navy ... before Obama.
Watch Joe Rogan’s interview with Glenn as well. Quite a few f-bombs there. Great interview!
Agreed. Ever since then I’ve been reading, listening (Red Scare, Useful Idiots) to everything you’re doing – whatever reason it seems that these questions surrounding power are being tied together more clearly now. This piece in particular is incredibly powerful. Happy to have the opportunity to thank you (thank you).
I have always voted Republican and I am 100% Trump...worked on the campaign. I hate liberals, AOC and Pelosi. I hate reporters and CNN. However I respect Glenn Greenwald and his work. Usually I tell people the news should be free and I will never pay one dollar for an NYTimes article. This time I bought a subscription here for $50. Glenn Greenwald might be the only newsman I ever give my $$$ to...
Greenwald is for people who actively seek out different ideas and points of view. That quality doesn't belong to one party or another.
Who cares why people choose their news sources? You can sit around analyzing the people that you clearly "don't like", continuing to foster the division that is a real problem, or you can at the very least keep this particular opinion to yourself, and help the world, in the process.
There is a basic question: is Trump (and his popularity in specific classes, genders, races, regions, etc.) "the problem", or a symptom of some deeper problem?
And if there is a deeper problem, how can a social and political consensus, across parties (transcending the left-vs-right narrative) be formed to describe that problem, and then solve it?
Historically, americans have been at their best when solving problems, not creating them.
The ruling elites (Deep State, Wall St. the military-industrial-complex) have become arrogant and uninterested in the problems of the working classes and increasingly large parts of the middle class.
The corporate media and the other service industries that reflexively genuflect to the ruling elites, gain power and wealth by selling out the working classes.
I'm a trump/conservative republican latching onto Glenn because although I disagree seriously with most of his policy ideas, I agree with him culturally. And, he seems to be for truth, which is what matters. Even if, again, I don't agree with him on policy, which is why I'm glad he's not a politician, and is bucking the norms and going against a party that may be a proponent for his own political agenda. GO GLENN
Yeah, I can't say I even know Greenwald's domestic positions. He is like a contemporary Chomsky, more stylish. I imagine he's similar to him.
I too have always voted republican but I subscribed to Glenn's substack the day it was announced. I also subscribe to Matt Taibi's site and I have been watching Jimmy Dore's youtube videos for a number of months. I bet I would disagree with just about everything those three say regarding domestic policy. But the three of them are taking on what is clearly the most pressing issue of the day - the new ruling coalition as Glenn calls it. I have come to the conclusion that the FBI and CIA need to be completely disbanded - as in everyone fired and the buildings emptied out. When the agencies that were created to supposedly safeguard our freedom actively work to overthrow the elected leader of the country, then THEY are the problem. No amount of "reforms" or "re-training" will remove the rot at the core of those two agencies. I've had enough of the talk about how the low level FBI agents are all virtuous and we only need to get new management. Their were 40 agents assigned to Mueller's witch hunt and none of them had the integrity to question, leak or even resign? It's quite possible the intelligence agencies of this country are the biggest threat to its freedom. With their allies in the press looking to increase censorship going forward I think it is more important than ever to have people like Glenn and Matt write freely.
I feel like the same: defund the police!
Historically the problem originated further back, it is rooted in the disruption caused by the industrial revolution, the Spanish-American war (1898), then after WW1, the disruptions caused by the invention of global supply chain logistics.
All of those events caused an increase in concentration of wealth and power and an increase in the "imperialistic" nature of the USA in the world. It was inevitable that a "hidden govt" (Deep State) would come to be given that the original Constitution did not anticipate the need to govern and regulate a global empire. (see Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience")
FDR's New deal and related policies (legalization of labor unions) was a boon for about a generation, but by the 1960s the economy was well on its way to being suburban and consumer. Not family farms, not blue collar factory jobs.
The collapse of the middle class economy eventually showed up as a collapse of the social and cultural middle. Traditions were abandoned. Technology disruption magnified the resulting cultural fragmentation and atomization. The fragmentation made it easy for the ruling elites to "divide and conquer".
You seems to be a professional hater ...
Based on what?
Ignore "TP". mentally ill
If you got anything out of reading this article, it should be that there is no "Republican establishment" or "Democratic establishment". There is simply the establishment. And when the cameras go off and the Kabuki theater is over, Pelosi and Mcconnell fist bump each other and retire to their respective mansions to eat $60 ice cream and laugh at the plebes who sop it up.
I believe his stance is much more nuanced than you give him credit for. He calls it on both sides as he sees it, not bound to any ideology. If more people chose policy over party we’d have a better functioning republic. Sadly, both sides engage in fear mongering to gain power and its corrosive.
Just like steroids and diet pills fear mongering works...and just like steroids and diet pills its not good for you. Just as long as we know its fear mongering we will be ok...but I dont know about everyone else....
I think Glenn listed the groups he is most concerned with in this article which are: hawkish and corporatist Democrats, pro war/neocon Republicans, Bush/Cheney operatives, the national security state and large corporate media outlets. Biden is a corporatist hawkish Democrat. Glenn isnt being critical of the Democrats as a whole...just those specific groups. The Trump Republicans are not hawks, they have this concept of the deep state, they hate Bush, and despise corporate news...and I think Glenn can agree with those qualities. The part which Glenn is not in agreement with is just about everything else about Trump. I will agree Trump is outside of the usual norms and takes a bit of getting used to. Thats the part which isnt compatible with some people.
Unpack "corporate news":
1. censorship, violations of the 1st amendment (free speech)
2. throwing working class people under the bus for 50 years
3. political correctness and bizarre SJW narratives that are out of touch with reality
In each of those cases, the D and R wings of the establishment are engaged in a toxic war against working class people, and increasingly on middle class people (as the middle class collapses).
Make no mistake. I am a free thinking individual and not a member of a cult. I read through the articles and agree&disagree at my pleasure...and I do that with everything in life. While masks were made political I decided early on I needed a supply of N95 masks and so got a pile of them here. A lot of people say a lot of things but I ultimately decide whats best for myself. As for the article I can agree&disagree on some parts but I can still be a fan of Glenn...
I gave up on Identifying players by their Jerseys 35 years ago. Glenn's article is objective. For nearly 60 years, Classical Liberals were marginalized in the Democratic Party, and Constitutional Conservatives were marginalized in the GOP. The balance of Collectivists in each party have now joined, and it's in plain sight. Trump is a catalyst and has emerged as a leader, but the underlying conditions have nothing to do with him.
honesty is what’s attractive to everyone. this is also why Orwell stood out.
He can still believe what he believes and support Glenn in his mission to expose the establishment. Two things can be true, and they don't have to be on the same "side". Diversity in thought is good
This is a tremendous essay. I devoured every word. This will age very, very well.
I haven't made this good of a $50.00 investment in years!
As another commenter mentioned previously (h/t SimulationCommander), a gift subscription would be an awesome Holiday present. I can think of few who need something more important than what is provided here by Glenn. The whole populace would benefit.
I've been saying for years that media needs to change drastically, (I thought that crypto would be the answer) and now it's time to put our money where our mouths are. Disconnect (as much as you can) from big media and support individuals reporting the truth.
THANK YOU for calling out the bullshit. I find it endlessly frustrating that more people can't see through it, and reading your column helps me feel less isolated and alone.
Truly!
When I was a child their were lots of cowboy and Indian movies, and although it was clear the cowboys were stealing land from the Indians they were still the good guys. I would ask grown ups how come., and of course there was never an answer, which was probably better then lying to me. Since I was a child my uncle would tell me that people will say, write and declare they're making statements of truth, but it is up to me to prove whether it is truth they are telling, or lies. So from a very young age I knew that sometimes my government told me lies, and I can't ever remember trusting them, or the media. Not that they always lied, but I knew they were very capable of it. Children are taught to trust what parents and teachers and adults say, so they have learned not to question authority, and therefore are easily manipulated. I'm not against religion, but in this regard it doesn't help either to encourage blind faith. Yes you can see how the media manipulates and controls and too often are not purveyors of truth, but we have been groomed to be almost willing victims of their lies. For me, they used Trump to encourage a mindlessness using hate as their tool, and not only to hate him, but the deplorables who were his followers. He was perceived even demonic enough to have killed every person who died of Covid-19. They encouraged black and white thinking, with no shades of grey. The media seemed like a cult, and it was amazing how blindly people followed. Now they would have you believe that the devil is now gone, and the messiah, in the form of Joe Biden, a notorious liar, has become our savior. I think we have been heading in this direction for a very long time. Trump just help them out to speed things along.
Trump forced them to upshift 3 gears...and we're seeing the mechanisms cough and sputter.
It seems that once a child is taught and encouraged to believe what they want to believe in spite of evidence and common sense, the classic examples being Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, their critical thinking skills--to the extent they develop at all--will likely always be subordinated to their own emotional biases. Even well meaning and seemingly benign and innocent lies have a corrosive effect on one's ability to perceive reality as it is as opposed to what one wishes it to be. And so we have become a nation of easily led children.
Not that I think the new emperor's clothes aren't absolutely fabulous, of course.
Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are necessary precursors to a modern liberal arts indoctrination, er, "education". Wish fulfillment becomes superior to objective reality.
Only if the child is retarded..
Idiocracy cometh. You should fit in very well.
So, is retardation, I guess you already found it, with all the verbosity “...have a corrosive effect on ones ability to perceive reality” 🤣😂😅
Sentence fragments and emojis are quite suitable, on the other hand, for those who, like you, express their most profound thoughts exclusively through their thumbs. The extraneous commas, like the other shiny objects you find so attractive, are a bit pretentious, though. You should probably stick with fart jokes and the doo-doo icon for greater clarity.
Good day. Enjoy "owning" me with your final witty riposte, which you will no doubt post shortly.
I just found this, Could you be more gay?
Your little rococo of a comment says it all, good day geek.
Yesterday, when I heard about Trump trying to pull troops out of Afghanistan on the radio and THEN heard some talking-head idiot at NPR argue we should STAY AT WAR there, I knew we were already fallen down the rabbit hole of a dystopian Alice's Wonderland.
It was also instantly obvious to me, what Glenn points out here:
"One can find it right now in the ongoing effort to denounce the Trump White House for attempting to remove troops from Afghanistan, where the U.S. has been fighting and shooting and bombing in a war now about to enter its 20th year. Take a look at who is demanding that those troops remain, and there you will find the real axis of power — all of its component parts — in the United States."
Yep, EVERY mouth that says we should leave troops in Afghanistan is an enemy of The People, and a servant of the MI(L)C (the L is for _legislative_), no doubt about that.
If we've learned anything over the last 4 years, its that the overwhelming majority of Americans lack the capacity to think critically. Whether you look at the Russiagate conspiracy nonsense or the Qanon whisperings, a huge number of Americans exist very much like little sponges, waiting to soak up whatever propaganda is spewed upon them. The formula is straightforward - simply ensure that the propaganda that is being disseminated is grounded in a narrative that people want to hear.
Which brings us to the problem, which is twofold:
First, those who have been brainwashed by propaganda that affirms and supports their desires are very resistant to "deprogramming". They don't want to hear that their empty heads have been filled with propaganda. Nobody likes to admit they have been fooled, least of all those who aren't prone to (or, in many cases, capable of) thinking critically. Moreover, many of these people have spent years forming their entire social network and worldview around the nonsense they have absorbed. There are real social and economic costs for many of these people if they want to "leave the church" and embrace objective reality, which is just another disincentive to do so, even if they were otherwise inclined.
The other problem is that even if you somehow manage to replace the propaganda in the mind of a zealot with reality-based information, the susceptibility for future brainwashing remains. It isn't enough to simply replace the bad information with good information if the goal is to prevent a similar, future outcome. Its necessary to imbue people with the ability to thinking critically and be necessarily skeptical in all things, in order to immunize them (at least to some degree) against future brainwashing - which is a much higher barrier to hurdle then simply countering the disinformation they have previously absorbed.
Stanislav, Well said! Adding to this are several critical psychological supports for the Good-hearted Liberal Zealot:
1) "Moral Authority" -- the Democratic Party traditionally held itself out as the "conscience of the nation." Adherents to "sharing the wealth" through additional funding for social programs see the DP's moral authority over "greed-head" Republicans. That Republicans are "racist" is natural conclusion along this line of logic:
- Republicans hate taxes.
- Republicans hate lazy poor people who use up tax money.
- A very high percentile of the poor are non-white.
- Therefore Republicans want to deny social programs to non-whites.
- Ergo Republicans are "racist."
2) "Virtue": Since The Good-Hearted Liberal holds moral authority over the nasty, self-centered Republican -- and is willing to put his money where his mouth is -- it is impossible that he is "racist," therefore he is Virtuous.
This self-regarding feeling of Virtue, once fully metastasized, cannot be threatened in any way -- certainly not by the truth.
This is how the East Coast Establishment's organs have absorbed "lefty" brains from the top universities, how all manner of evil is rationalized by the messianic Intelligence actors, and why the mounting "Left wing" fascist fraud enjoys such fervent support from the wealthy on both coasts.
Trumpism is about leveraging disruptive network effects that have caused the establishment to rot internally and start cracking apart and weaken.
https://medium.com/rally-point-journal/collective-intellignce-and-swarms-in-the-red-church-49f6a6d04825
For this to be true, you would have had to have an establishment that was not rotten to the core before Trump came along.
Are you proposing that western-european (anglo-germanic) civilization is spiritually impure or something like that?
re: "Systems colonize lifeworld".
The establishment's collective sense making system (modern rationalism) is what created most of the industrial and postindustrial world, like it or not, so it was capable of coherently functioning for a long time (classical liberalism began to emerge as early as the 1200s-1300s).
Setting nitpicking over timelines aside, the shift to a suburban consumer economy after WW2, from family farms and factory work, and then the abandonment of traditional values began the shift to postmodern deconstructive nihilism and neoliberalism.
Globalism, neoliberalism and offshoring of working and middle class jobs was a massive departure from the historical norm.
As the economic middle collapsed in the USA, the cultural and political middle collapsed.
Then tech disruption, network effects (shared learning), made the old sense making system, the Blue Church, hierarchies of curated expertise, broadcast modes of information sharing (classrooms, TV, etc.), increasingly irrelevant.
What you grossly overlook is the huge fraction who have "tuned out", for various reasons, and therefore come to errant conclusions.
You're not wrong that many lack the capacity to think critically (and don't even know that that expression even means, thinking that it is about criticizing people), but your error is in presuming that just because a sizable group has behaved badly that it's therefore an "overwhelming majority."
I can also agree that far too many are "brainwashed" via propaganda.
I think your basic "prescription" is a better educated populace and on that I wholeheartedly agree.
I suggest you think again on some of your points about just who it is you're actually speaking about and avoid over-generalizing to the whole population.
People keep talking about how divided the US is. And wondering of anything can bring us together.
But look at the commenters here. They are from all over the political landscape.
It's in unbiased journalism that we meet up again. Too bad it's so rare.
Glenn,
They are winning and it is breaking the minds of intelligent people. I had a conversation with a friend that is conservative but voted for Biden. The bounty story was the primary reason. He also shared that Trump's following reveals that we have many more racist hate groups we have in our country. He doesn't think Trump will leave on Jan 20th! These examples show how successful propaganda narratives are. None of the MSM talking heads believe Trump won't depart but over the next 60 days they will beat it into submission only to never mention it again after he is gone.
I am very concerned at the total lack of skeptics in the media. They joyfully accept the left's position on everything and advance it. They willing cover for corporate giants in all industries with few exceptions. We have less shared reality today than in the past and it is only getting worse. When the mass of people have no trust in the media and institutions the conditions are set for disaster.
I appreciate your work and willingness to say what is true.
This is how it is done:
"(Top military officials and the commander in Afghanistan later admitted the bounty program “had not been corroborated by intelligence agencies and that they do not believe any attacks in Afghanistan that resulted in American casualties can be directly tied to it,” but by then, the job was done)."
--from Glenn's article above.
Notice how the admission that there were no casualties tied to the alleged bounty implicitly affirms that the bounty story itself is true?
It isn't.
It was a complete fabrication from beginning to end. It never happened. But a lot of people who think they're smart and informed are wandering around this planet with this lie in their heads, because of exactly this kind of climbdown.
What is scary is that the people passing along this narrative know it is false. They agree with the action of hurting Trump so much that they will support any action based upon a false narrative, including a possible war with Russia, staying in Afghanistan, etc. to hurt the Orange Man.
It's amazing how much this relates to classism...
And while wandering about, shouting such enlightened mantras as "Bleach injections!"
Yeah, I would recommend that book he cites — the Chomsky one. Manufacturing Consent. Although you could skim most of of it and get the picture.
What's weird is that once we've agreed on that and opened the blinds — what do we actually agree on? Who knows. The tensions are still there, no matter how false in origin.
I'm starting to think I had it backwards -- the media isn't covering for the Dems, the Dems are just the frontmen for the media.
Saw a spooky article in NYT today (a pub which I recommend you all read at least once every other day because that's what critics of media ought to be doing):
"A former Obama aide, Tommy Vietor, recently advised Mr. Biden to focus on going directly to social media and to work closely with friendly left-leaning online outlets. “Give them scoops and access,” he wrote, “and grow their audiences and influence the way Trump’s team has nurtured fringe rags like Newsmax and OAN,” a reference to One America News." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/22/business/media/joe-biden.html
This is just how the info-grift system works, but it's so much more BORING than a centralized conspiracy of DEMS or GOP running some show — rather, factions among different industry sectors broker stories based on clicks and traffic. Boringgggg. But wouldn't that innocuous-looking system be much more nefarious than one with an outward propaganda system?
The media can't tax or imprison ppl. They don't make laws, enforce laws, or interpret laws. Political parties, on the other hand, run for office to do just that. The media only controls you if you surrender all skepticism & critical thinking to blindly accept whatever they're telling you.
Ya, but clearly they can elect the people who do.
Except when they (the MEEDYA) uniliterally endorse AGAINST the opposing candidate (looking at 2016 when the majority of media est. endorsed Clinton)
2016 was a weird event, but there is a lot of disruptive stuff that emerged from deeper levels to defeat Hillary, just as in this election, 2020, that stuff emerged to drive D party losses in the House of Representatives and a lack of success in the Senate.
The "establishment" (Deep State, etc.) is not adapting very well to such disruption because the weirdness results from dysfunction in the information ecosystem (collective sense making apparatus).
Trumpism is about leveraging disruptive network effects that have caused the establishment to rot internally and start cracking apart and weaken.
https://medium.com/rally-point-journal/collective-intellignce-and-swarms-in-the-red-church-49f6a6d04825
Over my head but tyvm
Before that they handed Trump the GOP Primary.
Once THAT was done, the Anti-Hillary voters were a big enough force to give Trump the win.
I, for one, welcome being censored. It allows me to become a free thinker since I am safe in the knowledge that should I make an error of judgment, it will be expunged from the record, and no lasting damage will be done.
We all make mistakes and it is nice to know that when we do, there is a safety net to arrest our fall. Having a safety net gives you more freedom to experiment and develop, not less. Censorship is necessary so that people have freedom to express themselves.
Yes! Big Brother loves us and wants us to Be Safe!
What the hell is Greenwald's problem? Why does he hate Safety?
(Wear your mask, citizen. It is for your protection.)
Is this satire? If so, well done.
If not, well...censorship allows you freedom of thought within the borders others--who? how? By what authority?--establish and maintain?
That's ridiculous.
Self-censorship is the most onerous kind of censorship. For the writer, being censored externally frees them from the responsibility to self-censor. They can indulge their full creativity. Their output may ultimately be censored, but they still have the satisfaction of knowing they produced imaginative work without constraints. This is worth the price of spending the rest of your life in prison.
Please never stop!
hahahahaha. I find a great analogy for rational of "preemptive war" in this post. Most excellent. We must start a war to prevent a war, we must also welcome censorship for the sake of free expression. Well done. Good one.
Look it's Amy Klobuchar!
Glad I’m paying $5 per month for this; completely unaware of the facts re: the pro- war stance of the NYT article on Russian bounties and the pro-war bipartisanship of the Armed Services Committee. Fascinating and disturbing. I’m re-thinking a lot of assumptions I’ve made over the years.
Bravo, Glenn. Love him or hate him, and I harbor both emotions at once, Trump is the last independent who will ever get within sniffing distance of real power in this country. That is my takeaway from 2016 till today. The Borg did indeed learn their lesson, despite what leftists say about Dems failing to learn correctly. They learned only too well. Keep up the good fight, while the light sputters out in our world.
It's a tempting conclusion.
But the Trump presidency ensures that more bait and switch messiahs on white horses will be held out to the voters, and the voters will snap at them as they did with Trump.
Obama.
Reagan.
Carter.
Left messiah, right messiah, left messiah, right messiah.
Obama lost a lot of voters to Trump. Trump lost a lot of voters to Biden. That pattern will presumably continue when people learn just how dismal and horrible Biden/Harris really are.
There are some really insane factions within Trumpism, but if the sane elements can minimize the influence of the crazies and put forward some concrete reforms in favor of working people (keep the border "closed", reformulate "bad trade deals", bring manufacturing back, etc.), the R party could be revived and regain some credibility in the "middle".
I'm not some kind of crazy eyed radical. I'm a slightly to the right on some things / left to very left on others Democrat.
And I watch people buying the hogwash from Clapper, for example, and I want to scream.
Ordinary people in the 60s and 70s had no trouble believing the FBI and CIA lied to them repeatedly.
And then the 80s, Reagan, Clinton and mass stupidity.
I'm so glad you are writing. Maybe there is hope.
I noticed this a while ago. It has been accelerated by Trump.
What we are seeing is further alignment between neoliberals and neoconservatives. Both believe strongly in globalization: global labor and trade markets. Both neoliberals and neocon believe in the use of American power as a form of preemptive (or as Gabbard would say "regime change") global positioning wars.
If you think about Biden and his voting record on trade deals, the globalization of labor (read cheap labor), WTO, bank deregulation, etc.- Biden is essentially a "kinda" pro choice W Bush, who wants some gun control.
The separation between Neolib and Neocon is miniscule.
Hiding in plain sight:
(Oct 22, 2011)
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354-500-revealed-the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world/
I agree with everything that Glenn has written here, but as my high school English teacher would no doubt say, this article is too long and repetitive. Glenn’s mind is full of facts and good ideas, but he needs a decent editor.
Just so there's no confusion: I've been writing without an editor for 15 years. The attempt to edit my article on Hunter Biden materials was a huge and very rare exception, which is why I called it censorship, because it was motivated by political, not editorial, concerns. Of course there are benefits to spending days going back and forth with an editor to polish every word -- I do that for my books -but there are huge downsides, such as removing the passion, flattening the voice, imposing uniform tone, slowing debates down considerably, and subjecting oneself to the perspectives and biases of others. Most journalists write within a very structured organization and hierarchy of editors and while no one method is perfect or universally preferable, I think those who have written and reported independently have done a much better job over the last two decades. But again: despite the attention on the "editor" issue precipitated by my leaving TI, the way I'm writing here is how I've written for the past 15 years - at Salon, the Guardian and the Intercept. There's nothing different.
I've been teaching HS English in the Bad Neighborhood for the past 25 years, so the level of detail and explanation sent me into a wonderful place where there are no red pens.......
I like your style.
Ignore the snobs and carry on.
By all means, Mr. Greenwald, change what has worked for 15 years.
Hey Glen, I think I have a scoop for you. I have been watching Robert Barnes podcast, he is one of the trump lawyers, who got pushed out by Powell, and will likely be back in the fight this week. He seems to think the reason that no one wants the recounts to happen, both Republican and Democrat, is that it will expose how AWFUL the signature verification system is in the USA, and that it is way worse than anyone believes. That its basically impossible to match in as high as 50 percent of cases, and thats why no one wants to the recounts to go forward.
I dont know if you will see this, but I thought it might be of interest.
For medical-orthopedic reasons my cursive signature is "bad" and I have to get signed documents, such as surrender of retirement funds, notarized.
According to your "logic" my vote would be considered bad (to vote in-person i still had to sign a document, but NOT show picture ID! lol), or at least require an elaborate, time consuming, expensive appeals/corrective process which itself would result in considerable vote suppression.
Dude I live in Canada. We have such rules, their is absolutely no difference in turnout after the laws for voter id were passed. Having a voter id card, or a drivers license is easy.
As to going to a vote station to vote. My grandfather landed on the beaches of Normandy in 1944. The least I can do is go and vote at the voting station.
Dont like signature validation? Do what the Canadian conservative party does, we have to send a photocopy of government issued id along. Its not hard.
Stuff that happened in the USA this election is a ridiculous joke.
That doesnt happen in real countries.
I personally have no problem with voter ID, I'm just pointing out that signatures vary a LOT, making accurate high speed computer processing technologically problematic.
But to your point, yes, my late wife, a Spanish national, was astonished the first time she saw me vote here in the USA, and I told her no ID was required. It is probably normal in most of the world to require ID to vote. That is what every body in those countries is used to (but not most of the USA).
The fact is that the USA is orders of magnitude larger and more complex than Canada, it has 50 different voting systems, one per state, and in many of those states (rural, poor), the bureaucracy and political apparatus is not capable of taking on change rapidly.
The left is making most of the noise about voter suppression ("by Republicans"), in poor communities, including rural black communities in the south, where "race" is used as a hyper toxic political propaganda tool.
Texas seems to be a good counter-example, a Republican-sponsored state law limited in-person voting (or maybe mail-ballot drop offs?) to one site per county. Given that there are very large counties, some with high populations of poor people, that seemed incredibly absurd, especially when Texas is tending toward "purple" status.
Honestly, it doesn't feel different at all except for the occasional typo
That a boy!
Glenn, thanks for your reply. To be clear, I have been a devoted reader of your work since the early Salon days. Needless to say, I agree with most of what you write and appreciate that you support your opinions with empiric evidence and strong logic. My criticism regards only your writing style, which I find to be long-winded and repetitive. Good writing, IMO, is tight and concise. An editor could focus only on stylistic matters, not content. That would be their sole assignment, and you, of course, would have final say over any changes they might suggest.
Though I do not expect you to change the way that you work, I will continue reading your articles, as long as they remain as trenchant and thoughtful as they have always been..
Its a 5 minute read, how much did u want to leave on the floor?
I think Rob wanted 70% cut . . . replaced by emojis perhaps.
I like long form. Often, that includes context, and emotional connotations that often add considerable value.
In a more basic level, I prefer it because I always know I am getting Glenn, and anyone else writing freely, rather than an distillation some other person believed I am somehow better off with their intervention as opposed to my own thoughts.
Think basic signature check.
Given the coming authoritarian environment, I believe these ideas have considerable merit.
I don’t think he’s hiring. Go GG!
If you want short clips and "hot takes" stick to twitter.
I skimmed it then re-read it quickly a couple of days ago, and just read the whole article more carefully. It was fine.
I read this/below linked article earlier today, seemed at least 10 times longer, excellent article, but contains more fluff than I needed to read. (I had read the earlier parts of the Slotnik story, how a creative, smart centrist Democrat in the midwest in a voting district that went for Trump twice, struggles to keep her party, the govt, her voting district and the USA in general from flying apart at the seams.)
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/11/13/elissa-slotkin-braces-for-a-democratic-civil-war-436301?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Nope. Do not agree. This is Greenwald unleashed. Leave him alone. Let him write. Let him expose in his newly found freedom.
Regardless of your high school English teacher, Greenwald won a Pulitzer. I want to read what he wants to say.
He writes with a lot of examples to, I believe, counter those who would argue that these things are aberrations or isolated incidents.
Lol, emphasis on "decent". Glenn had editors at The Intercept and we all know how that worked out. ;-)
Maybe "proofreader" would be better...
A good editor would ask him to take out the part about the re-alignment of political factions. It is speculative and bolstered only by unreliable anecdotal evidence. Where is the randomized, double blind study that confirms his hypothesis?
Since Mr. Greenwald flew the coop @ TI I've been doing a randomized double blind study of news media editors (as distinct from book editors etc., etc.). The most successful newsroom editors would have cited; According to anonymous officials requesting anonymity speaking off the record with sources familiar with the matter.
*a good editor would gently suggest he take out the part about re-alignment of political factions.
Mr. Greenwald is attacking the integrity of the political system. That is an extraordinary claim.
Extraordinary claims require anonymous sources to make them credible and as you point out, any good editor would know this. Mr. Greenwald tends to believe his own eyes, which is a rookie mistake in the world of journalism.
and you tend to believe the long arm of the DNC which has been wrong, wrong, and purposely wrong to the detriment of America for years now
As cogently described by Frank Chu in his complaint that Bill Clinton stole Mr. Chu's Hollywood movie pay from the entertainment favored by trillions of sentient being in the "12 Galaxies", the DNC is clearly being remotely mind-controlled by illegal alien pod people spores orbiting on the dark side of Uranus. The spores cleverly infected the Pope's long underwear at the US-Mexico border and then from there, moved into Trump's tinfoil hat and then Rudy Giuliani's hair dye.
https://telstarlogistics.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/frankchu1.jpg
It is incredibly obvious to those with secret bar-b-q cannibal sauce that all of the randomized, double blind research data was sent into occultation by the illegal alien pod people spores that have been orbiting on the dark side of Uranus after being prepared by the same nefarious 12 Galaxies forces that Frank Chu has been protesting since Bill Clinton stole Chu's universally popular off-world movies.