That anti-intellectualism, unlike what we have today, was largely bourgeois mistrust of the impoverished, tho.
The Whiskey Rebels weren’t drunk dumbasses, they were a proletariat uprising, justly so.
EDIT also the European stereotypes were largely because we had almost no schools so only those who could hire tutors were able to be educated.
God the amount shit oatmeal brain keeps spewing is making my head spin.
It appears to be having an effect on his approval rating too
Last week feels like it was a month ago, and 2016 feels like it was 1000 years ago…
And then there were two (or more)…
" It is now confirmed: A second intelligence official has given the inspector general firsthand information about what took place in the phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s leader. The attorney who is part of the team representing the first whistleblower told ABC News Sunday that they are now representing a second whistleblower…
The confirmation came shortly after the New York Times reported on the existence of a second whistleblower who was weighing whether to come forward with information. Zaid says he does not know whether his client is the person mentioned in the Times story. “I can confirm that my firm and my team represent multiple whistleblowers in connection to the underlying August 12, 2019, disclosure to the Intelligence Community Inspector General,” wrote attorney Andrew Bakaj, who is one of Zaid’s colleagues representing the first whistleblower. The Times writes that the new whistleblower “matches the description of the official the Times reported on last week.”"
So I need to unpack some thoughts that have been building for a little over a week. Article that provided enough that I felt like I had to talk about it:
Taibbi’s probably right about the fact that this is an action by the intelligence community trying to revolt against the administration. And there’s a documented history of the intelligence community lying. But we do have enough of the call to know that what these CIA agents are saying happened did happen. (Not to mention him broadcasting it on fucking TV last week) What is going on is probably a schism between the institutional state, which is supposed to adhere to certain norms, and the elected state, which has decided that nothing is forbidden.
Neither is exactly clean when it comes to the respect for the rule of law. Or their own biases.
And Trump’s done enough to deserve removal from office on a number of fronts unrelated to Russia or the current mess. He’s running the government like a two-bit huckster, and stealing from the public trust.
But the thing that got congress to actually step up and start pushing back was an attack on a member of the institutional elite. That is kind of pathetic, even if there’s the valid reason that letting him get away with this allows him unfettered access to use state power against his political opposition.
Yes the intelligence community lies, but they generally lie in favor of keeping the political structure intact. The fact that we’ve now got two CIA agents saying fuckery is afoot is pretty powerful in my opinion, because normally they’d be trying to suppress the fuckery by any means possible.
From a moral standpoint, Taibbi’s overall point may be right, but his specifics are all wrong, basically invalidating his entire argument from a legal standpoint.
A “Whistleblower” is a legal term of art that applies to a person who follows a specific set of actions when trying to alert people to government violations or mismanagement:
The Ukraine person is a Whistleblower because he or she followed the approved steps.
Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning are not whistleblowers under the statute because the went to the media. As a result, agree with them or not, the Whistleblower protections didn’t apply to them. John Kirakou talked to ABC New and the New York Times. Again, going outside the Whistleblower Statute.
I’m not trying to defend the actions of the government for prosecuting these people, I’m just saying that the current Whistleblower’s actions and circumstances are different from Snowden, Manning, and Kirkaou.
"“It took me and my lawyers a full year to get [the media] to stop calling me ‘CIA Leaker John Kirakou,” he says. “That’s how long it took for me to be called a whistleblower.”
I’m sorry that Kirakou has suffered as a result of what I think are honorable actions, but this statement stinks of resentment to me. Regardless of whether Kirakou was justified in what he did, going to the media does make you a leaker. Contrast that to what the person did with Ukraine.
In the current situation, the Whistleblower followed all the correct steps, notified the correct people, and didn’t go to the media. As a result the Whistleblower Statute applies and he or she is protected.
This is just a bad article.
Taibbi’s point is a journalistic one, and I think he is seeing the legalistic view of what a whistleblower is to be limiting. This pair is speaking with a level of institutional support. That is because they are upholding the fundamental culture of their institution. If they weren’t? The system would silence them if they tried to go through normal channels. He then provides examples.
He’s making a fundamentally moral argument, and bringing up the idea that the people who’ve spoken out before haven’t been treated as well as a valid point. And I think Taibbi and the people he talks to fundamental trust the institutions to be as self-dealing as possible.
And? I think I also disagree with the fiery headline. The CIA whistleblowers are whistleblowers, it’s just they’re blowing the whistle at the political positions. I’ve heard Taibbi on the new podcast he’s doing on Rolling Stone, where he talks about what sounded like a fundamental uneasiness about the process of impeachment and removal. His point is a fair one that the process is to some extent an un-democratic one, but I think he misses that it’s a part of a necessary balance. There have to be rules to the game that are respected. And Trump’s trampling them.
It just feels slightly distasteful that we’re doing this to protect the grifter child of one of the political elite instead of any of the other good reasons. But it’s probably also the clearest example of him flouting not just the norms of the systems, but its rules.
I generally agree with your post, and I think that the article’s headline is terrible, but Taibbi’s main point seems to be that the Ukrainian Whistleblower isn’t a real whistleblower because he or she hasn’t suffered like these other people who came forward. As a I tried to explain in my post, the Ukrainian Whistleblower is fundamentally different from most of the examples Taibbi used because this person followed all the correct steps instead of going to the media or posting the information online directly.
This part of your post I disagree with. No offense but this is a pretty simplistic view of what’s going on right now and is missing the point.
The reason why Democrats are up in arms about what Trump did in Ukraine isn’t because they’re trying to protect a “child of one of the political elite,” they’re furious because Trump used taxpayer money, that had already been approved by Congress to Ukraine, to extort a foreign government into investigating Trump’s biggest political rival in the upcoming presidential election.
The fact that Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son specifically isn’t important. If Bernie Sanders was leading the polls and was seen as having the best chance at beating Trump, and Trump asked Ukraine to investigate Sanders, there would be the same amount of uproar. If it was Andrew Yang, same thing.
Additionally, Trump’s call with Ukraine was literally the day after the Mueller Report came out. We have the Whisteblower complaint. We have the summary of the call. This incident is so much easier and simpler to explain than anything previously. Especially because Trump is directly implicated by his own admission.
Saying that this whole thing is just to protect Biden and his son, or that’s the reason why Democrats are pushing for impeachment so hard is a gross underestimation of just how much Trump is undermining the separation of powers between the Executive and Legislative branches, US foreign policy for his own private ends, and election interference.
I know. Part of why it’s taken me so long to try and figure out the best way of saying it. It’s trying to see this from both the inside and outside perspectives. And the outside perspective is skewed, either by right-wing media or inherent left contempt for the holders of power. And let’s add the fact that we’re probably more plugged-in than most.
The idea that Biden did anything wrong is a crock of shit, he jumped on a bandwagon that included much of Ukraine and the EU. It’s a “black is white” situation. We’re being gaslight, and he deserves to go for that too.
What I quoted from is correct in every way, and the fundamental reason he should be impeached and removed for his actions. He’s breaking the constitution to blackmail other countries into fabricating charges on his political opponents.
Talbbi, Greenwald, Tracey, and that whole little cohort have a vested interest in denying the Trump whistleblowers, because they’ve spent so long now basically carrying water for trump and the administration, because doing otherwise would be admitting they made the wrong call in 2016, and at this point, not only would that be deeply embarrassing for them, it would also have a direct financial impact on them. Since it would (apparently, in their eyes) destroy their credibility for a number of reasons. So now, suddenly, they’re making out like they’re the arbiters of what a Whistleblower gets to be, and that now whistleblowers - especially ones that don’t benefit them by talking to them/their outlets first - are bad and not real whistleblowers/leakers, actually.
The whole fucking thing is stupid, it’s just a rich media guy covering his and his buddy’s arses, so that they don’t look like stupid assholes for, well, being stupid assholes for the past four or so years, and so that they don’t have to admit they’ve spent that entire time loudly and enthusiastically going against their stated principles for the sake of ego, and more importantly, money.
A friend of mine described that whole group quite succinctly the other day - they’re basically just personifications of a reddit argument that has gone on way too long, to the point where what they were arguing for initially has long been discarded, and the only thing they have on the participant’s minds is not admitting they were wrong in any way, shape, or form, and doing or saying literally anything within their power, using every resource they have, to avoid doing so.
Fun facts - one of the reporters who burned Kirakou, and then went on to forgo his journalistic protections and testify against Kirakou to the authorities, now works at The Intercept, and was also the lead reporter on Reality Winner, who he also played a large part in burning.
I wasn’t aware of that part of what happened. That’s pretty morally reprehensible.
I know this is off topic, but I know you’ve talked about Greenwald and the Intercept before, but why are they so anti-Russia meddled in the election? Ideologically, they don’t align with Trump, so why all the conspiracy-theory-mongering that it wasn’t the Russians who hacked the DNC and everything else?
@Churba, I want to hear your answer, but I have some of my own suspicions from just watching some of these journalists.
I think that some of it is the disgust with the institutional elite, feeling like the Democrats are trying to paint the Russian meddling as the sole reason they lost and use it as an excuse to ignore their own populists. And that gets radicalizing over time as you see people chase after what feels like the smallest factor of 2016 instead of asking what they themselves did wrong.
That probably combines with a feeling that if the CIA told you the sky was blue, you’d need to immediately check, then detox and check again in case they decided to drug you. They think that anything the intelligence agencies say is a self-serving lie.
It might not be all of the reasons, but does it seem off-base?
Partially, yeah. And I’d agree if this was a one-off, but for all of that group, it’s just part of a pattern - The relentless Russian interference denial, and then once it was a proven fact and they couldn’t deny it without looking completely insane, downplaying and denial of the majority of it and just acknowledging the small stuff. The consistent down-playing of republican actions as just normal stuff, just expected, just meaningless, while attacking dems relentlessly, not just for far more minor infractions, but often for just trying to push back against the shit the republicans were doing.
The way they treat people involved with other conflicts. In Greenwald’s case, the way he’s treated other leakers who leaked stuff that didn’t support his whole deal, and in Talbbi and the rest’s case, defending Greenwald’s actions there. The invention of weird conspiracy theories to explain away evidence they don’t like, the willingness to buddy up with unambiguous fash propagandist fucks like Tucker Carlson(Of whom Greenwald and Tracey are not uncommon guests, and Talbbi has defended and defended appearing with.) The contradictory statements most if not all of them have made between whistleblowers and leakers who have agreed with them, and that haven’t.
And that’s leaving out all the extra stuff that just adds colour, like Talbbi’s past work, especially at The Exile, coming back to bite him in 2017(and his various excuses for it, like the time-honored “It’s just satire bro!”), or things like Greenwald’s histronics about how he couldn’t come back to the US without disappearing into Gitmo(Which made him seem very dangerous, and hard done by, being unfairly persecuted for just telling the truth, maaaan), before just taking a regular-ass commercial flight back to the US and hanging out in New York for a while so that he could pick up an award, and making other semi-regular appearances.
In isolation, you would be right, but when taken in the context of the rest of their behavior for the last few years, it’s hard to say there’s not a pretty clear pattern that emerges.
Fair enough, I have kind of let Greenwald fall off my radar so I wasn’t sure what was going on with him anymore.
Taibbi I’d been reading more actively, but he spent most of the Obama administration writing about the financial system. He seems like a meathead at times, drawn to and in love with the vulgarity even as he hates the ends it is being used towards. It’s the same kind of love of transgressiveness for transgression’s own sake, delighting in upsetting people without really going against the grain of the culture.
Yep. Not just reprehensible, most of their actions in the Reality Winner case are entirely indefensible.
Basically, because that one admission also breaks the central thrust of a great deal of their output for the last four years, so it’s not just “Oopsie, I made a small mistake”, it’s “Oopsie, everything I’ve written for half a decade plus every outlet who ran it is now called pretty severely into question, as is my and their credibility and expertise.”
They spun a bunch of hysterical nonsense about Clinton during the election(and later, about the Dems, when Clinton retired), ranging from the merely questionable, some basic fact-checking should have gone into it type stuff, all the way through to outright conspiracy theories. They also put out a lot of ink about how Russian interference was all fake. If they admit they were wrong, not only is it a blow to the ego and a massive blow to their credibility(and also, their financial bottom line), it means they are also tacitly admitting that their perspective was wrong, and also that Clinton(and the Dems) aren’t actually as bad as they said, and maybe they’re not infallible, maybe they’re not the only ones who can tell us, and their guy isn’t the only one who can save us.
There really isn’t much of a deeper motivation here - Just a bunch of relatively-rich-to-outright-very-wealthy dudes who are loath to admit they were wrong at any point, because it will cut into their hip pockets, their credibility, and will result in them getting less public adulation from the people who hang on their every word because of all those questionable things they published.
In this time where the bar to creating an outlet is lower than it ever was, particularly for people of their level of resources and fame, it wouldn’t end their careers, but it would certainly damage them severely.
I’m not sure I’d go that far. They might not support Trump himself, sure, but it wouldn’t be the first time that people have accidentally been absorbed into a movement they’re theoretically not ideologically compatible with, because they hate the same people(in this case, the dems.)
I mean, Look at Glenn - he was a hardcore, Ron Paul supporting Libertarian, and Ron Paul libertarians were basically the prototype for the MAGA assholes, and hasn’t shown much difference from how he was then, to now, other than switching who he supports in the election. Taibbi, despite his really quite good book around the wall street crisis, was a core part of a very right-libertarian styled group of assholes who ranged less in bigotry, than just about how circumspect they were about it for the sake of ongoing social acceptability.
Call me crazy, but I think it’s worthwhile being skeptical of rich, famous men whose not only ideology but entire worldview turns on it’s head seemingly overnight, with the only real evidence being that a different group of people who also hate the same people have decided they’re cool.
Credit to him, he’s done some good work about Brazil and the Bolsonaro regime. But also, please forgive me for being less than awed by him as a journalist, when the only time he’s doing good work, or even seemingly attempting to do the right thing, is when it’s about a situation that could have a direct negative impact on him, his husband, and their mountainside mansion near the beach, and doing something about it means he likely retains his status and wealth.
Thanks for the somewhat in-depth and thought-out response.
Maybe this is just my elitism speaking, but most of the media I consume comes from the NYT, Washington Post, BBC, etc. I don’t usually read the Intercept or Rolling Stone.
