Greenwald interviews someone who was high up in the Trump administration. Meh.
Greenwald talks about personal responsibility and hypocrisy, like Climate Czar John Kerry whipping around the world on private jets to squawk uselessly about the environmental crisis, or Robert Reich being all for housing the poor in Berkeley, up until the moment that someone wants to put housing for the poor in his neighborhood. Okay.
He then pivots to savaging Hasan Piker, Cenk’s multimillionaire Twitch-streamer nephew on much the same basis, and I’m good with that too. Good raw red meat.
He posts a clip of Hasan trying to make a ruling on who is ‘on the left’ these days and concluding that neither Greenwald himself nor Matt Taibbi qualifies any more.
And Glenn says, in so many words: “Listen you spoiled lying brat. Who the fuck are you to be making those calls?”
And Glenn says, I never claimed to be on the left, or the right, anyway. The only labels I’ve applied to myself are “civil libertarian” (he actually calls himself this all the time), and …
“Anti-Authoritarian”
(I’ve never heard him say this before, and it really made me glad).
I told you all this just to share that small moment of joy I felt.
***
To me, a serious preoccupation with Liberty (civil, constitutional, or otherwise) is pretty much mandatory for any thinking person trying to live in the heart of the Empire. Whether you know it or not, my darling, you really really want Fox News to continue be able to go on the air and spew what you think are lies. Because the damage done to freedom by preventing them from exercising their right to Speech is worse, by orders of magnitude, than any damage that can be done by some witless yokel who believes any given ‘lie’–whether that lie is told by Rachel Maddow or Tucker Carlson.
As for anti-authoritarianism, in my view, that’s a little more optional, although …
There IS a natural tension between real Liberty and any Authority and I think that’s obvious.
As for labels, I don’t care if Hasan Piker or anyone else thinks I’m a ‘leftist’ or not. But I will say …
Anarchy Now.