https://twitter.com/astroehlein/stat...79518237306881

The Daily Mail isn't - look elsewhere for sources pls

LOL @ reading USAToday. America really dodged a bullet imo.

Interesting last few pages....

All I can say is I hated on Greenwald before all the cool kids did.

Good post. Democrats currently have 0 power in the U.S. governement, and are at least nominally trying to defend some of the principles GG seems to care about, yet he spends all of his time attacking them.

And on a broader level, this type of false equivalency bull**** is what helps propagate the common sentiment of "democrats are just as bad as republicans" or "politicians are all evil anyway so i'm going to tune everything out and stop caring about what's going on in my country" or "everyone in government sucks so let's shake things up and vote in someone like trump."

This conditioning is very real and the kind of people that read Greenwald are perfect targets for it.

Loneliest dvaut post ever.

You're all cool though, even replol. I'm serious about solidarity. I believe einbert's ur-Fascist posts and Kasparov's tweets. At some point any one of us may need a safe house, another body in resistance or help in some other way.

Going with Hitler again, he didn't have a majority of support. Part of the opposition thought that he could be dealt with and they effectively choose him over other parts of the opposition.

failing NY Times...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/05/u...smtyp=cur&_r=0

LOL. You still didn't answer his question. Sessions lied under oath. As an American, why does this not infuriate you? If you care about America, you should be screaming to your representative to have Sessions investigated immediately.

He has no principles; at least none outside of his culture war. Trump lies twice per sentence and has been on both sides of most issues. It's not possible to support Trump and have reasons outside of partisanship, xenophobia and authoritarianism.

I dunno; I don't mind standing up for Greenwald if that's what you're alluding to. I think he has a lot of valuable things to say. I agree with Chris/bobman and Alex that to a certain degree, the continued focus on "HRC/Obama Did It Too" is eventually missing the point about how aberrant and extreme Trump is, and that in the end, it merely serves to erase the very meaningful and clear differences between Trump and standard fare mediocre American leadership, and then from there, it creates a sense of malaise or justification for thoughtless "both sides do it too, time to shake up the system, just gotta go with Trump and see what kind of chaos we can get."

But I'd also argue that is in many ways a blatant misinterpretation of what Greenwald is often arguing, so I'm not sure he can be held responsible for the most cynical representations of what he's saying.

But I do feel like some of this -- the results we see today -- is just deserts for Democrats from I dunno, as long as I've been politically active, from the 1990s onward. They've been so craven for so long; I don't mean the Bernie versus Hillary primary battle. I mean things like how quickly they genuflected to the perceived popular will for the Iraq War, and how little they objected to the growth of the surveillance state, or cheered on the abuse of unions or acquiesced to right-to-work laws, or how quickly they line up for the latest rounds of tax cut/deregulation/defunding of the welfare state because right-wingers are yelling about it. The actual important political battles that by and large the Democrats quit on before the game even started. It's understandable why so many are disappointed with the party in lots of important areas, like civil liberties. At some point the frustration builds and it's easy to understand why someone might not want to let those emotions drop quickly.

We can and should lambast Trump and the GOP for their utter abandonment of all principle, but the establishment Democrats have often provided the false consensus for much of it. Greenwald strikes me as a thoughtful guy with some leaks, like not being able to let some old grudges and emotions go and move forward. A failing, but I sympathize.

He gave you his answer. Sessions and his perjury don't threaten his white, straight, cis, upper middle class lifestyle.

I feel like re-reading King Lear is in order at this point. I need the refresher on how deep the madness might go.

The problem with the DVaut theory is that GG is not the only person who has been a persistent critic of the surveillance state, and if you read any of the other people in that position, they're out there making the case against Trump, not slamming Hillary for being too much of a Russia hawk. Just skim Conor Friedersdorf's feed at the Atlantic, which is mostly just full of him banging on Trump and people he thinks should be standing up to Trump. There was one piece in January (pre-inauguration) where he slammed the Obama admin for loosening some privacy rules at NSA. Julian Sanchez's writings have been in the same mold. And those guys are both Cato-type libertarians who ostensibly might be interested in some tax cuts and Obamacare repeal, but they're really laser focused on Trump's abuses of power.

The other problem with the Dvaut theory is that GG's (and the far left generally) official Theory of the Election is that the center-left betrayed economic populism for soulless technocratic liberalism + identity politics and that's what caused all this racism to fester and bubble over. That's essentially the Trump Dunning School theory!

New travel ban incoming, this time 6 countries.

Also the wall is going to be a 30 foot high concrete barrier.

Trump's mindset is basically "Everyone's mad at me. I know! I'll do the travel ban and the wall to get people to like me again!"

Dvaut,

100% agree with that. I'm not a Greenwald fanboy. I just think that neither he, nor Van Jones (and I am a fanboy of his) should be subject to j'accuse from anti-Trumpers.

Unfortunately this isn't a bad bet. The GOP learned long ago that obstructing had some very tangible political benefits by getting low-information voters to sense the government was in peril because nothing was happening and all people were doing was arguing about stuff. Savvier people get that arguing and bickering is part of the game, part of the compromise, part of the essence of governing and pluralism and how people hash things about. A certain class of voters sees the bickering as worse than a bad result. One of Trump's rather sage bits of political wisdom -- borrowed from fascists -- is that you'll win over some amount of support just by acting confidently DESPITE opposition, in fact, you'll win over some people who will see you as Alpha Big Man if you act in the face of opposition, because you faced opposition and pushed forward and won. Won what? To what end? IRRELEVANT they think, government just does stuff and so it's important to act, a real leader is the one who runs over their competition and doesn't value compromise, but instead, real leadership is to see whose will triumphs over the losers. See awvall.

I'm not saying this is a bulletproof strategy but one legitimate cure to be seen as a doer who rises above the typical partisan bickering is just to start acting and doing and being a strongman. The details aren't relevant, some percentage of the population responds simply to that alone.

No to the bolded. The theory is that the soulless technocrats betrayed the populous and they didn't show up at the polls in the numbers needed.

I hope I'm clear that:

1. I agree, Greenwald could take lessons from Julien Sanchez and instead pivot to focus on Trump's abuses -- just like past versions of Greenwald said he should. I'm not defending his present tact, just that I find it an understandable failing.

2. I agree that *some* of the far left's explanation for Trump's victory is essentially a revisionist history re-telling which is ultimately servile to the kind of narrative that will redeem the establishment and the old guard elites, not prove the far-left correct. At least some of it.

It's not clear Snowden "[told] the whole world everything he knew"

The House Intelligence committee thinks Snowden took ~1.5 million classified documents. Their report[PDF] says "less than one-tenth of one percent" of what Snowden stole has been "published or referenced" by the press (pg 20)

You need to get Gramps into this forum. I tried. I keep having basically these same arguments with him on FB. He's still obsessing over HRC's neoconism.

You get one guess how long it is before today's ban takes effect.

I think a big part of Greenwalds frustration is that structural criticism of American surveillance and foreign policy is virtually non-existent right now, while specific criticisms of Trump actions are flooding the market. So rather than just be another voice in an anti-Trump crowd, he opts to fill the space that he deems empty and largely leave the Trump bashing in the capable hands of literally every other liberal journalist on the planet. And to a degree, this thread vindicates that decision. His Trump critiques, which are fairly frequent, go unremarked upon, while his broader structural critiques attract heated debate.