The Worst of the Alt-Left

If there is one lesson that I learned from 2016 it's this- just because someone else is a self-described liberal or progressive does not make them an ally to one as a liberal or progressive. We learned this in the primary, when the seemingly fine Shaun King fed into the "Bernie or Bust" movement after the New York Primary, when Bernie had no mathematical pathway to the nomination- he behaved no different than the clearly insane H.A. Goodman during that time. Sure, on a lot of policy questions, I agree with Shaun King, in fact I agree with him on almost all policy points that he writes about. It's very clear though that King, Goodman, and others who fed into their cult-movement to discredit Clinton aren't motivated by winning elections and actually governing to make the lives better of the people they claim to represent. This is all about their agenda of destruction of people within the left-wing coalition of America who don't see the world exactly how they do.

These folks are not alone, nor are any of the folks I just named the worst. In fact, they pale next to the worst offenders. Take Glenn Greenwald, and most of those in his "Intercept" crowd, a left-wing conspiratorial news outlet. He has road the coattails of Edward Snowden, a former NSA hack turned traitor, who ran off to Russia with thousands of e-mails about a program we already knew existed, and then acted like he had a story. Greenwald is willing to defend anyone who worked with or defended Snowden from the U.S. Government, because Snowden fit Greenwald's world-view of a big, evil national security state that is spying on random Americans and breaking laws, just because they can. Greenwald defends Julian Assange, at a minimum a criminal hacker that founded Wikileaks, possibly a rapist (though to be fair, he hasn't had a trial yet, but that's because he's hiding in an embassy in the UK), and certainly works with the Russian state-sponsored hackers to smear the enemies of Vladimir Putin. Now Greenwald is giving cover to the Trump Administration on his Twitter, basically echoing his questioning of the entire U.S. Intelligence community's conclusion that Vladimir Putin and Russia were behind a coordinated hacking effort aimed at defeating Hillary Clinton in the election. Greenwald tweets such nonsense as:

Even the Intel Community's friends are complaining about what an evidence-free bad joke yesterday's report was https://t.co/66ohBhn22R pic.twitter.com/aBJhfV1ZDu

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 7, 2017

If your standard is that the intelligence community should release their classified info to satisfy your need for "proof," then we should never believe them. Greenwald, like Trump, returns to Bush-era intelligence failures in making his case that we should, in fact, not believe them- ever. This is, of course, because Putin has protected and worked with some of Greenwald's biggest cash-cows, namely Snowden and the federal prisoner, Chelsea Manning. Both of these people violated their oath to the nation and gave our secrets to enemies, like Russia, and that's just fine with Greenwald because in his mind the American national security complex is the scariest, worst thing in the world. Basically the enemy of his enemy is his friend.

Greenwald is simply a minor annoyance, who's place in history was providing Donald Trump left-wing cover for denying findings of fact by his own government that he will soon lead. That is small-potatoes next to Tulsi Gabbard, a very sharp and capable Democratic Congresswoman from Hawaii. Gabbard has a shot to be a very big deal someday, she's bright, handles the media well, and stays on message. Unfortunately, part of her message is that we should basically concede Syria to Putin and the Assad regime, and not back any rebel groups fighting them, because their may be bad people in their ranks. Now, there's some merit to not wanting to arm ISIS or al-Qaeda, but that merit has limits- Assad is a war-criminal, and he and Putin are killing people by the thousands in their thuggish attempt to maintain power. Gabbard is arguing against President Obama's position that Assad should go, and instead is agreeing with the incoming Trump policy- which is essentially going to be allowing Putin and Assad to crush the rebellion and maintain their grip on the country. It is such a cold, calculated sell-out that it is nearly impossible to believe that it's coming from a Democratic U.S. Congresswoman.

Hey though, we are supposed to like her, right? I mean, she surfs...

As I said- sometimes your friends aren't your friends.