Oh Go Fuck Yourself, Glenn Greenwald

By Evan Hurst

 

He knows you are but what are he?

Gather ’round the campfire, everyone, for Glenn Greenwald has a Very Serious Question:

Oh golly. That’s a hard one. Let’s get out our abacus and some scratch paper and weigh the pros and cons.

Greenwald, who likes to remind his readers every now and then (constantly) that he really really really really really doesn’t like America, and who is in theory a liberal who embraces liberal values, but totally isn’t, is just not sure whether Donald Trump’s plans to rip healthcare away from millions, deport the fuck out of every brown-skinned person he sees, and so on, are worse than the generals — Mattis, McMaster and Kelly — SUBVERTING TRUMP’S AGENDA by sneakily getting appointed to sweet-ass cabinet and White House positions by Donald Trump, and then sort of trying to rein in some of President Fuck-Bonkers’s most dangerous tendencies.

Oh and he’s mad about the Deep State, because of course he is. Greenwald spends a lot of his column beating a straw man to death, claiming that all the sane people who HAAAAAATE Trump, many of them conservatives who worked tirelessly to keep him from getting elected, and who have been in “COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY, MOTHERFUCKERS” mode since Greenwald’s pals at WikiLeaks and the Russians he is SO IN LOVE WITH (he would deny that accusation, but ya know, actions speak louder than words, and also fuck him) helped Trump get elected, think Greenwald and his weirdo friends are dumb for believing there is a “Deep State.” This is a false construct. We very much know there is a Deep State, and we know it makes Greenwald and Sean Hannity shit the bed, so we make fun of them about it.

But he’s really really confused about which is worse: that Trump is in office and beating the shit out of American institutions and the Constitution, or that the so-called Deep State (normal people refer to them as “career public servants”) is trying its damnedest to protect the Republic from Trump’s damage. The horrors! It reminds us of that thing Anthony Scaramucci whined during his 120-some-odd-hour tenure as White House Communications Director, about how there are some White House staffers who “think it is their job to save America from this president.” It’s almost as if there is a wide consensus among thinking Americans that the traditions we hold dear are in danger, and that we should do something about it. (Also, to all those people, thank you!)

But Greenwald can’t abide that, because how DARE the Deep State Military-CIA-Industrial Complex act all high and mighty like they for real care about protecting America from the authoritarian dipshit in the White House, when it’s very clear that #BothSidesDoIt anyway? How could Donald Trump possibly be more evil than the United States Of America has always been since forever?

No matter how much of a threat one regards Trump as being, there really are other major threats to U.S. democracy and important political values. It’s hard, for instance, to imagine any group that has done more harm, and ushered in more evil, than the Bush-era neocons with whom Democrats are now openly aligning. And who has brought more death, and suffering, and tyranny to the world over the last six decades than the U.S. national security state?

Is it really hard to imagine any group that’s hurt people more than the Bush era neocons? What kind of pathetic What-About-Ism is this, GLENN? Is it not possible to simultaneously believe that the neocons empowered by George W. Bush did a lot of really bad shit (and that America in general has some blood on its hands), AND ALSO that Russia under Putin, the Rwandan genocide, North Korea, hell, a bunch of Communist governments going way the fuck back, are WORSE? What about ISIS?

The dead exploded babies his beloved Russians killed in Aleppo?

HOW ABOUT FUCKING POL POT, GLENN? IS THAT WORSE?

It’s handy that he only goes back six decades, otherwise he’d have to contend with little things like Hitler and Stalin and oh God what the fuck kind of #SlatePitch would we be reading then?

Don’t get us wrong — we don’t think it’s ideal that generals are in all these positions, or that #DeepState patriots are doing what they’re doing, and during ANY other presidency, we’d probably be appalled. But to use Greenwald’s construction, what president has done more to abuse power and subvert American institutions in his first six months of office than Donald Trump?

Anyway, this is very stupid, and what we’ve come to expect from Greenwald, who also is PRETTY SURE the Trump-Russia story is a buncha lies. As soon as he finds the time, we’re sure his Intercept website will publish a journalism exclusive claiming to have found the 400 pound New Jersey dude Trump always claims REALLY hacked the 2016 election, and we will have to tell him to go fuck himself all over again.

What tedious fuckery.