Glenn Greenwald Laments

In his most recent Substack column Glenn Greenwald covers many of the points that we have been discussing here. (via Maggie’s Farm)

Like it or not, the United States, under the leadership of an enfeebled old fool, is now engaged in a proxy war with Russia. 

Worse yet, Greenwald suggests, the engagement has never really been debated. In many ways we are no longer allowed to express certain opinions in public, and thus, those who question government policy are generally denounced as Russian stooges.

One might add that this shutdown of debate seems to correlate well with the fact that much of the public discussion is being led by certifiable imbeciles, Hollywood celebrities and assorted third-rate bureaucrats. It’s not just stupid, which has seemingly permanently infected our university system, but it is also a lack of integrity, at the highest level of government. 

One remarks that Greenwald, a British socialist who lives in Rio with his husband, has been widely denounced for failing to promote the party line-- and, of course, for having appeared on Fox News.

If that is the level of national debate, we are in big trouble. When we attack individuals we are showing that we are incapable of addressing the issues. 

How much do you now trust the people who signed a letter declaring the Hunter Biden laptop story to be Russian disinformation? How much do you respect them, now that not a single one of them has dared apologize for a clear dereliction of duty? And these are the people who have been in charge of the government intelligence bureaucracy. 

As for the issues deserving public debate, Greenwald lists these:

Hovering above all of these grave dangers is the question of why? What interests does the U.S. have in Ukraine that are sufficiently vital or substantial to justify trifling with risks of this magnitude? Why did the U.S. not do more to try to diplomatically avert this horrific war, instead seemingly opting for the opposite: namely, discouraging Ukrainian President Zelensky from pursuing such talks on the alleged grounds of futility and rewarding Russian aggression, and not even exploring whether a vow of non-NATO-membership for Ukraine would suffice? How does growing U.S. involvement in this war benefit the people of the United States, particularly as they were already — before this war — weighed down by the dual burdens of pandemic-based economic depravations and rapidly escalating inflation?

He continues:

These are precisely the questions that a healthy nation discusses and examines before jumping head-first into a major war. But these were precisely the questions declared to be unpatriotic, proof of one's status as a traitor or pro-Russia propagandist, as the hallmark of being pro-Putin. These are the standard tactics used to squash dissent or questioning when war breaks out. That neocons, who perfected these smear tactics, are back in the saddle as discourse and policy leaders — due to their six-year project of ingratiating themselves back into American liberalism with performative anti-Trump agitprop — makes it inevitable that such sleazy attacks will prevail.

So much for the marketplace of ideas. So much for the free trade in ideas. Amazingly, the neocon foreign policy commentariat is now out in force defending Joe Biden’s pathetic performance on the world stage. Even French president Emmanuel Macron needed to walk it all back, suggesting that the Biden language was far from being helpful.