Iβd respect it more if it were consciously cynical. The fact that these imbecilic media cretins and career State Department and CIA functionaries actually believe themselves when they say that theyβre deeply offended by the repression of Putin or the CCP or Iranian mullahs or Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro β right after they get off a call about the latest U.S. arms shipments to the Saudi monarchs or cash transfers to Egyptian despots or support for a coup against the democratically elected government in Bolivia β is frightening. How could anyone believe that the U.S. actually opposes domestic repression? That kind of self-delusion means humans can get themselves to believe literally anything. Thatβs more frightening to me than if they were knowingly lying for power.In which Greenwald shows he really gets it. Bravo.
Or perhaps this new taste for censorship is an indication of Democratic healthiness. This is a party that has courted professional-managerial elites for decades, and now they have succeeded in winning them over, along with most of the wealthy areas where such people live. Liberals scold and supervise like an offended ruling class because to a certain extent thatβs who they are. More and more, they represent the well-credentialed people who monitor us in the workplace, and more and more do they act like it.Excellent work. As such, it has the BlueAnon kooks in full 360 head spinning mode.
Extreme authoritarianism works, because viruses arenβt magic. Extreme libertarianism works, because a naked, completely unleashed market can adapt as fast as any virus. We have inductive evidence for authoritarianism. We have to deduce libertarianism. We can still argue about the moderate window between themβbut we know it sucks.Maybe, just maybe the deaths are good, and you shouldn't try to stop it? Maybe evolutionary pressure is the answer to retroviral phenomena? Nobody wants to hear this take, it's too real.
Moreover, what if even these concepts of libertarianism and authoritarianism trap us within a simplistic frame? They seem to be oppositesβbut they both work. Suppose we could construct some kind of five-dimensional political geometry under which they were actually one thing? Libertarian authoritarianism might work even betterβ¦