Glenn Greenwald, the world's greatest living journalist, has another masterpiece up:

https://theintercept.com/2017/08/05/...to-subvert-it/

It is possibly peak GG. Everything about it is perfect. It's long in a way that suggests it was actively edited for length. The headline ("What's Worse: Trump's Campaign Agenda or Empowering Generals or CIA Operatives To Stop It?") is delightfully biased and dishonest. Also, despite being maximally weighted in favor of Trump, it doesn't even have a clear answer! And of course, in classic Greenwaldian fashion, the article doesn't actually take a stand on anything, it's just criticizes how "the media" and "the elites" are being mean to Trump even though he said he wouldn't touch Medicare, which is supposed to endear him to the left despite having already been revealed as a lie. Naturally, there are dishonest paraphrases to set up the media straw man that's being attacked. (Reporting on white supremacists attacking McMaster is cast as "rall[ying] behind McMaster as some sort of besieged, stalwart hero whose survival is critical to the Republic.") Here is GG shedding a tear over the firing of Rich Higgins, who wrote that bat-**** crazy Islamophobic memo:

There's also the weird GG tic where he cites prominent voices in the media who are raising the exact points he's criticizing the media for covering up, but then he just asserts they are the minority compared to his dishonestly paraphrased straw men.

Say what you will about GG, he's always willing to speak truth to power and defend the sitting president of the United States against the shadowy cabal of financial elites and journalists who really control everything.

I think you guys are Greenwalds main source of traffic.

He has 900k followers.

oh i miss GG from his salon days

Eh.. this isn´t automation revolution. My father assembled "robots" like this 30 years ago. Only reason why you would have people doing such boring Jobs in 2017 is mismanagement and off course it is hard to find people working shifts at a belt for $ 13.

Worst part of the GG article was it was weak on the CIA/NSA part of the Deep State thesis. As far as noted and as far as I know, the worrisome power transfer is entirely to the military/Pentagon, which has been at odds itself with the rest of the intelligence community. The Trump admin has also essentially delegated policy in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria to the military and for now that's probably for the best, but the tradition of civilian control isn't something that should be discarded. And, that's not really at odds with Trump's campaign where he talked about Generals quite a bit.

The general point though, that we should all be wary of talk about how Mad Dog, Kelly, and McMasters are rescuing us is, is, well, GG has probably just been following my posts here.

That is Greenwald at his worst, this sort of value-neutral contrarianism

This is just a falsehood. The highest profile Republicans who endorsed Clinton were like, random civil service and natsec hacks.

Yeah and how'd that turn out for Goldman Sachs, Glenn?

Like later in his article he gets around to Trump having obviously been lying about entitlements and friendliness to business, but everyone ****ing knew that at the time, and the idea that sophisticated operatives and businesspeople BELIEVED HIM is ****ing asinine.

This is also just flatly incorrect and Glenn not living in America has to be the reason he could write it out.

There's a good way to complain about the inexplicable bipartisan and media deference to The Troops and worship of generals as like, inherently better than other leadership options. But this ain't it, because he keeps lying about Trump. Trump The Peace Candidate and Trump the Entitlement Protector were believed by ~10 people each.

I had never heard of Glen Greenwald before Snowden, and I can't say I'm terribly impressed with what I've seen from him post-Snowden. Can somebody point me to the good bits that gained him such a loyal following in the first place?

George: Orange and co are all liars, it is known.

Conway:Benghazi!

Wasn't Dvaut essentially making the same points few moths ago? Yeah Trump is bad. But "Deep state" undermining a president could be worse long term.

Haven't read it yet but I can sign on to this from bobman's take

His strength during the Obama era was calling out Democrats on national security/civil rights stuff when few others were willing to. He wrote a great book around 2010 maybe called With Liberty and Justice for Some about the harsh treatment the poor and vulnerable get in the justice system versus the leniency given to the most powerful.

The bits that gained him his following was hammering Obama and other Dems from the left, though he was writing under Bush too.

I think it's all 10+ years old at this point.

And it's a good point. GG may suck at making arguments, but that has nothing to do with why he's reviled.

That's why he's reviled by me. Dude is dishonest af.

And Justice for Some is an incredibly book, and Greenwald's foreign policy/terrorism writing is across the board excellent and has been for 10+ years. When it comes to domestic stuff like entitlements, well, maybe not his strongest suit.

It kind of depends on what the alternative is. A Muslim registry and the Sessions/Kobach Voter Suppression Committee could well be worse.

However, it's important to note that what GG is attacking in the article is not damaging leaks of classified info from the unaccountable Deep State. (And he could have. I would be pretty troubled if the Deep State had leaked those diplomatic transcripts. But he doesn't even mention that.) His real target is McMaster and Kelly, whom he sets up as "unelected" officials who are undermining the democratically endorsed Bannonite agenda that Trump campaigned on. Here's a quote:

This is pretty wild stuff. For starters, McMaster and Kelly are obviously not elected officials, because no one in the White House other than the President and VP is elected. The WHCoS and the NSA are never elected. They are appointed by the president. That's how the government works. Making a big deal of how they are "unelected" is ridiculous. Steve Bannon and the martyred Cohen-Watnick and Higgins weren't elected to anything either. Also note how GG consistently implies that Trump's "agenda" (meaning, apparently, the Bannonite elements of his campaign) was somehow elected, rather than Trump himself and that any deviations Trump himself makes from that agenda (like appointing McMaster) are democratically illegitimate somehow. Finally, note that Flynn is somehow mentioned in opposition to McMaster in this sense. You will of course recall that retired general Flynn was the deepest of deep state hacks who made his way up through intelligence and the DIA rather than line service like McMaster. There is no rational way that replacing Flynn with McMaster represents the increased influence of the Deep State.

The notion that anyone understood Trump's foreign policy to be non-interventionist is pretty wild as well. If you asked one hundred randomly selected MAGAs in November whether more or fewer Arabs would be bombed under Trump, how many do you think would say "fewer"?

We see what McMaster's doing. If Kelly is working for country, we're in decent shape. I'd also love to see all the Trumpkins keep touting and cheering a guy who's instrumental in stopping Team Trump.

I like in the beginning how Jeff Flake (R) called Trump's Muslim Ban a "Muslim Ban."

Kayleigh, a millennial woman with an Ivy League degree, is definitely a good representation of your average Trump supporter.

Kayleigh Mercenary

"I hire the best people."
"I fire the best people."

Look how close.