Greenwald despite his personal views remains committed to the
principles of investigative journalism and is therefore to be commended. As he
admits, General Michael Flynn's views are in sharp contrast to his own but as a
journalist he is unwilling to embrace lies for the sake of seeming political
victories. Greenwald has remained a stalwart voice in the face of the DNC's
Russiagate conspiracy theory.
Greenwald himself a Liberal sodomite has nevertheless
rejected the Democratic Party/Mainstream Media narrative and has been
effectively blacklisted in some quarters. And yet his critics would rather not address
his arguments. No one can seriously accuse him of being pro-Trump and so
therefore he stands as a genuine non-partisan journalist trying to discern the
truth with regard to these issues and these claims. It's a rare thing these
days and certainly viewed as a threat by some.
Trump and his coterie are undoubted criminals and yet the
fact that the DNC will not pursue Trump on literally dozens of impeachable
issues and yet insists on pursuing this flawed, contrived and even dangerous
narrative is itself telling – in truth a story of considerable magnitude that
deserves as much attention as the criminality and sleaze of the Trump
organisation.
Greenwald knows full well the DNC is not actually Left in its
ideology and yet it has literally 'duped' many of its members and thus to the
deceived, someone like Greenwald who 'seems' to be 'defending' the likes of
Flynn, Barr and even Trump is viewed with suspicion. It is truly a strange
moment in what is already a very strange time.*
Some might find it shocking or even offensive that
investigators and journalists such as Greenwald are insinuating corruption with
the FBI. The media seems to present this in such a way – to suggest that
accusing the FBI of impropriety is an outrageous claim. The only thing I find
shocking about it is that either these reporters are ignorant of the FBI's
history or that they are so brazen as to believe the public has forgotten the
FBI's long and sordid history – a track record which hardly improved with the
death of J Edgar Hoover who was undoubtedly one of the most corrupt men ever to
hold office in American history. The FBI's history is one of corruption,
scandal and a complete disregard of the US Constitution.
Are we to believe the corruption is limited to just Comey and
McCabe? Again, those that make such assertions beggar belief and tell us more
about themselves than any argument they would make.
The truth is that Flynn was targeted for his views and what
he represents. He's part of a minority group that operates within the
Establishment but is reckoned by many as a faction promoting political heresy.
They believe that in the 'Clash of Civilisations' Russia should be an ally not
an enemy. This is in sharp contrast to those who embrace the Mackinder 'World
Island' view as reiterated by Brzezinski in the 1990's which necessarily
demands the breaking of Russia in order to control Eurasia. The foreign policy strategy
of the Establishment vis-à-vis the Russian/Soviet bloc has (since 1989) been
easily expressed – capture the Soviet periphery- the Warsaw Pact nations, the
Baltic states, the Caucasus and Central Asia, break and fragment the Russian
Federation and bring it to its knees so it can never rise again.
This was done with smiles in the 1990's. The smiles turned to
sneers in the 2000's and the sneers turned into threats over the course of the
2010's.
In what some have called the Establishment Civil War, Flynn
is part of the small Nativist faction. He's no traitor (as some might
erroneously suppose) but an ardent patriot (for whatever that's worth) that
believes the Establishment mainstream represents a threat to American power and
stability. Likewise the mainstream faction so despised by Flynn and others
believes that the post-war American dominated order they created is under
threat by forces both within and without and that at this pivotal moment – a
figure like Flynn in the Trump White House posed a clear and present danger – and
thus they took steps to remove him.
Are these machinations anti-democratic? In violation of the
Constitution? Of course they are but that's nothing new. The 'drama' that plays
out on the news is more a question of how well each side can sell their
narrative, market their brand and cover their tracks. If you peel back a layer
or step behind the curtain one finds the real concerns and sometimes discovers
the real power players – but in a 'liberal democracy' they must 'play act' and
go through the proper dramatic sequences. A narrative must be maintained even if
it is purely fiction.
As far as the nature of the conflict within the post-war Establishment
I have written about the factions and the nature of the conflict in a series of
essays I produced in 2017. The following link is to the final piece which
presents a taxonomy of the various blocs. The lines of course are not so clean
or clear and there is considerable overlap between these groups.
Trump's administration has largely been filled with less than
serious or even remotely qualified people. And of those that were and are
serious such as Tillerson and Pompeo, they never represented a real threat to
the Establishment's core doctrines and principles.
Flynn however, as an activist member (or agent) of a
heretical faction did represent a danger. And as Flynn was probably the most
politically serious and influential member within the administration and thus he
had the potential to influence the notoriously malleable Trump and implement his
ideas – he was viewed as a serious threat. And thus he was removed.
The faction Flynn is part of (and usually associated with)
finds its most articulate and popular voice in the thoughts of Pat Buchanan. And
as the Evangelical world is in flux there are growing numbers within those
circles that have come to embrace this kind of thinking. There are some
Libertarians on board as well as considerable numbers of those associated with
the Tea Party.
The ideas find some resonance with the likes of Glenn Beck
and Sarah Palin even though they would probably balk at Flynn's notion of
considering Russia as a potential ally in the war on Terror and a further ally in
checking the influences of China. That might have been conceivable during the
Bush years but by 2008 as Russia began to seriously react to NATO expansion,
such notions had largely been abandoned except for a handful of people like
Flynn who desperately hoped that American policy would be reversed and
reoriented. Men like Flynn and Buchanan placed their hopes on Donald Trump but for
the most part they've been let down.
Steve Bannon would be another in agreement with Flynn and yet
he too was driven out – not so much by the Establishment bureaucracy but by the
Kushner faction within the Trump administration – a faction that in many
respects rejects the Nativist line.
Jeff Sessions also represented this view but for a complex of
reasons found his tenure in the Trump White House to be short lived.
The John Birch Society should also be mentioned. In many ways
it's the elephant in the room. The organisation which has experienced a remarkable
resurgence alongside the rise of the Tea Party (and will undoubtedly outlive
it) finds considerable overlap with some of these sectors. From Ron Paul, to
some Traditionalist Catholics, to the fringe Evangelicals like Chuck Baldwin
and Brannon Howse these folks are sometimes ardent/sometimes ambivalent
supporters of Trump. While these are not Establishment people by any means they
have nevertheless found a voice in the Paul's and in the occasional member of
Congress. They exert an influence from the fringe it could be said and more
than one commentator has noticed something of a Bircher tone to the Trump White
House. From the Fortress America approach to the Right-wing (as opposed to
traditionally conservative) ethos, to the Nativism and Anti-'Communist' China
stance – there's more than a hint of Bircher influence at work in the Trump
White House.
Finally in terms of financial backing the Mercer Family also
seems to resonate with this view. There are many Republican politicians and
other players such as the Kochs (who are former Birchers) that resonate in part within some of these views and
yet are a far cry from fully embracing the views of Buchanan and Bannon.** They
find this activist wing to be useful and in some cases I am left with the
impression that they are using them as catalysts and even provocateurs – a kind of shock treatment to the political
Establishment – pushing the crisis to the extreme so that their already
somewhat extreme views can be reckoned as moderate and forms of reasonable
compromise. It's an old political trick.
And of course most importantly Trump himself resonates with
this view – not in principle for he has no principles. Rather it is his
instinctive position but one he holds loosely.
This is the context that explains the actions of the FBI and
why and how the media outlets which represent one or more of the
Establishment factions continue to
cover this story – or rather obfuscate it.
The split also exists within The Intercept. The news outlet
created in the aftermath of the Snowden revelations no longer exists. Greenwald
is now a nearly lone voice in an organisation that has branched out and in
other cases side-slipped into alliance with the Left-leaning factions associated
with the pro-Establishment DNC. Indeed even on this issue of Flynn there is a
split in the reporting. James Risen has become an apologist for the DNC line
and his contextualising of the story stands in stark contrast to the
investigative journalism of Greenwald.
One cannot help but wonder if money has played a large role
in its corruption. Many were dubious about the website's billionaire backer
(Omidyar of E-Bay fame) and the affect his money would have on the journalism.
When reporters such as Jeremy Scahill purport to stand for Leftist issues and
be a voice for the people and yet bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars a
year in salary – it's not hard to see why these folks have lost their way.
----
* Who would have thought Neo-McCarthyism would come out of
the Democratic Party? And yet for those who have been following the DNC over the
past generation, it's not altogether surprising. Despite the embrace of
identity politics and the fact that the Far-Right continues to label the DNC as
a beachhead for Communism – the truth is the DNC has been steadily moving to
the Right.
The Boomers who now run the organisation have sold out and
abandoned the values of their youth. Now under the guise of humanitarian
intervention the party embraces the politics of empire and is just as tightly
wed to the Military-Industrial Complex as is the RNC. The DNC is but a
component of the Wall Street-Pentagon-Langley apparatus. And the party that
once was filled with members who sought to curtail the power of the
intelligence and law enforcement agencies and viewed the CIA and FBI as
constitution-violating and subversive forces to US democracy – is today an
organisation that embraces these Establishment institutions with great zeal.
The party may support patronage for the poor and yet at the
same time has made many moves to roll back and curtail Great Society measures. In
its utter (pro-Wall Street) abandonment of Labor and working class voters it has
embraced the various expressions of identity politics and yet the DNC is far
cry from the socialism or 'cultural Marxism' its opponents accuse it of. And as
I and others have repeatedly argued 'identity politics' are not rooted in
Leftist principles but instead represent bourgeois decadence run amok – individualism taken to an anti-social
extreme – a common problem at work in both sectors of American politics.
But as a form of self-obsessed individualism these sectors do not stand on
Leftist principle but actually drive a wedge and seek to divide the working
classes from uniting – the real goal of Leftist politics.
The most striking thing in the Anti-Trump era is the fact
that the party consistently wages its political war from the Right. The
McCarthyite Russiagate campaign is a right-wing assault accusing the Trump
administration of being insufficiently bellicose and guilty of appeasement.
Standing with the intelligence agencies and opposing any kind
of oppositional journalism as subversive, the party's Right-wing orientation is
on display.
There are lessons in these strange episodes but few are able
to glean them. McCarthyism – a modern form of Inquisition is in the end not a
result or consequence of traditionalist thought per se but a manifestation of power and the result of a social
crisis. The methods and tactics used by power players come and go and resurface
from time to time. They are chameleons. Parties shift orientation and they adjust
their platforms accordingly, not in principle but in reaction to the changing
political winds. All of these groups abandon their principles and embrace a
power-ethic. Staying in power becomes paramount. It becomes the goal and
nothing else matters. And thus they all take their turns using the same
recycled political tactics and marketing schemes – McCarthyism, Law and Order,
Populism, Fiscal Responsibility, the Working Class, the Middle Class – the list
is almost endless.
** The Koch Brothers supposedly broke with the JBS in the
1970's but continue to share many of its views. Their father Fred Koch was a
founding member. Fred Trump has also been alleged to have close ties to the
group, in addition to his being accused of being a member of the KKK.
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