Glenn Greenwald vs Trump: going to the dark side?

No; this is just a rhetorical question.  Glenn Greenwald’s political tilt remains solidly left, and he is still more knowledgeable and consistent than most talking heads, pundits, and politicians in the West. 

It is just that in recent articles, as well as in TV appearances-usually on FOX, for he has been “banned” from MSNBC-he often defends Trump and/or attacks the Dems.  One of the latest articles “The Threat of Authoritarianism in the U.S. is Very Real, and Has Nothing To Do With Trump” (https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-threat-of-authoritarianism-in) is a prime example.  His main arguments in the article, that Trump might be an aberration in style, but not in substances, enabled by the well-established economic and political structures favored by the ruling class, including both mainstream parties, however, are decisively valid and hardly controversial at all.  Much can be related to the 1988 classic “Manufacturing Consent” by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, or even before.  This article, along with others by Greenwald, reveals more truth and insights than MSM.  But it still leaves something to be desired.  So, what went wrong? 

It has something to do with how Greenwald often conflates valid criticisms on Trump with the false ones, or sometimes totally negates the former, not just in this article, but also in other writings and interviews.  Greenwald is no fan of Trump, but his explanation has been, paraphrasing his words, that he will do his contrarian thing while leaving attacking the orange monster to others, which are plenty.  Fair enough.  Yet in doing so, objectivity suffers, gradually.   

One of the main themes in his recent writings and talks is to denounce how much the MSM lies and performs poorly such that it is distrusted by the public.  True, but irrelevant.  Does any large institution in the US enjoy a high level of trust?  The House, the Senate?  Who cares?  Even politicians with a lower rating than MSM get re-elected overwhelmingly.  Besides, it is not that the MSM was any better before whatever-time-one-remembers.  Curiously, Greenwald concentrates his fire on CNN, MSNBC, etc, but rarely mentions FOXNews, which has the largest audience on cable news.  Why?  Does FOXNews belong to MSM or not?  Or, does Greenwald consider the conservative media better than liberal media?

A major problem in the liberal news, as Greenwald correctly points out, is the obsession with the so-called Russian 2016 election interference.  Greenwald goes on to predict that the MSM will cover for the Biden admin.  All these warrant perspectives, and his Biden prediction will be proven wrong.  News networks yapping about Russia is nothing uncharacteristic in the long history of traditional media: it is simply the let’s-kill-the-King mentality.  Scandals in almost every US presidency-remember the Whitewater affair that lasted most of Clinton’s time in the WH?  One might think what Trump encounters is unusual simply because Obama got it clean for the previously 8 years.  But Obama was an exception: how many of his cabinet members were involved in a scandal, indicted, or resigned?  Compared to Trump’s or Bush’s?  Still, Obama got plummeted for his policies such as ACA, and who can forget the birther movement, which followed him into and out of the WH?  In this trend, why would anyone believe Biden will be treated any differently?  Lastly, should we include FOXNews or not?   

By denouncing the Russia fakenews, Greenwald often discounts the fact that Trump has been uniquely horrible on so many levels.  Greenwald says he relegates Trump-bashing to others, but he too often actively avoids or minimizes the subjects when they are pertinent.  For example, in the article “The Threat of Authoritarianism in the U.S. is Very Real, and Has Nothing To Do With Trump” Greenwald pointed out Obama also put children in cages, but he neglected to mention that it was Trump who deliberately used it as a strategy, and did it at a much, much larger scale.

Greenwald holds out hope that Trump prefers a different foreign policy like fewer wars.  Sadly it is all a smokescreen, and don’t blame the deep state for defying Trump because Trump himself is supported by the DS, or at least part of it.  Just look at his cabinet and his most ardent supporters in the Congress: who wants fewer wars or less money for bombs?  His entire cabinet, even those Trump had fired, who is/was anti-interventionist?  How about his policies against Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and many others, etc, that are much worse than Obama’s?  How about Trump critically poisoning the well on China relationship, potentially leading to a new cold war or WW3?  Why did Trump do these, and who led him to do so, other than Trump and the worst characters in the world he surrounds himself with?  Greenwald hardly calls out the people advocating the extreme positions, who are mostly GOP and FOXNews hosts.  Not to mention the retreats on climate, environment protection, etc.  This much is certain: Trump is never what he said he was or was going to do, based on his long history since 1980s.  Thinking he will or is able to do anything good is patently naïve, even in 2016.  Too many people, including Greenwald, thought they might be able to push or hold him accountable for his grand promises, but it is a mirage all along. 

Greenwald knows all those, even though he seems to spend more time blaming DS and Liz Cheney than Trump BS.  Greenwald also misses more serious matters.  One is in the article “The Threat of Authoritarianism in the U.S. is Very Real, and Has Nothing To Do With Trump” he brushed off Trump’s authoritarianism, although that corporate monopolies or others are dictatorial or more so doesn’t mean Trump can’t be.  What Trump tries to do is sufficient to raise non-stopping alarms since 2017.  In cases where he lost, it was simply because he is so ignorant and incompetent that nothing could have salvaged him.  Much Trump does after the 2020 election has been foiled.  Yet this outcome has more to do with the reality-detached ineptness of Trump than his lack of trying, and even though he fails, Trump has marshalled enough people to do his bidding and set the precedents to sow the seeds for a bleaker future. 

Greenwald also espouses the theory that COVID-19 coverage is over politicized for Trump.  It fits Greenwald’s thesis that MSM is bad, which may be true, but it still doesn’t mean that everything MSM does is bad or worse than Trump.  To the extent that the media works, especially during crises, this idea is hard to fathom, unless it refers to MSM’s China bashing, which clearly is not in Greenwald’s mind.  What is his beef?  One is that Greenwald blames the MSM for ignoring doctors and scientists being inconsistent with their messages about masks and racial protesting.  The consensus on mask wearing in the West underwent a major revamp, and you can’t blame people changing their mind after learning something new, by April.  On racial protesting Greenwald cited an open letter in the summer signed by about 1000 doctors and medical staffs supporting protests even when crowds were unavoidable.  But the criticism is petty: those 1000 doctors did not claim to represent the medical community, and many (more) doctors, e.g., Fauci, didn’t sign the letter.

A more substantial viewpoint of Greenwald’s is that the US COVID-19 response may not be so poor but is unfairly depicted by the liberal media to hurt Trump.  This is the least supported of all Greenwald’s arguments.  He cites figures from countries such as Canada to show that per capita, US is not so different.  His fallacy lies that while per capita the US is not the worst, it is still among the worst in the world.  And in terms of the total confirmed infections and deaths, the US is all by itself.  Perhaps for the actual infections and deaths, India and Brazil come close or surpass the US, but should the US savor any satisfaction bettering India and Brazil?  The US being an advanced country, and topping the global pandemic preparedness in Oct 2019 (https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/02/27/trump-johns-hopkins-study-pandemic-coronaviruscovid-19-649-em0-art1-dtd-health)?  Worse than so many Asian/pacific countries and many European and African countries?  Trump’s role is undeniable.  His lax views and actions on COVID-19 set the tone for his believers, GOP governors and officials, and when enough of these people flout COIVD-19 regulations, the states and whole country suffer, one wave/surge after another.  No extra amount of negative reporting is needed.  Biden or Clinton being the President in 2020 might not have made the US like Germany, but unthinkable it would have been as dismal as now.  Maybe Greenwald lives in Brazil, not exactly a paradise either, so from afar the US is not THAT bad.  But consider this: how many in the Trump circle and GOP officials having gotten COVID-19, vs how many in the Biden Team and Dem!  This shows that containing COVID-19 is doable, just a matter of whether you do the hard work or not, at the levels of individuals, groups, communities, and countries.  Trump was finally right: It is what it is.

Journalism intertwines with opinions, which veers towards less both-sidedness.  But since nobody is perfect, fairness and objectivity safeguard right vs wrong, no matter how strongly one holds any views.  OK for Greenwald to say Trump/GOP and Dem are all evil, but even implying Dem as terrible as Trump/GOP skewers objectivity and is way off in 2020.  It is good service by Greenwald to call out the absurd narrative of Russia, Russia, Russia, but not fair that by doing so he often minimizes the many unique dangers posed by Trump and enablers.  Of course Biden admin can be bad, but this remains a speculation and topic for the next 4 years. 

 

2020: A year of control experiments

Social sciences, including economics, are not considered “real sciences” because control experiments, by and large, can’t be conducted.  Hence, much text-book knowledge is based on assumptions, speculations, hunches, and who has the loudest voice, the most disciples, or, simply, the backing of the ruling classes.  Because of COVID-19, however, the world comes the closest to see and compare how different peoples, societies, countries, and governments handle the same virus, a control experiment as good, as large-scale, as real-time, and as real-life as it will ever get.  And much more can be learned beyond COVID-19. 

This control experiment does have the one and only “blemish” in that the virus didn’t break out in all countries at the same time, which can nevertheless generate important comparisons and insights.  There is also this pandemic paradox: Say there were 5 cases before the government enacted a strict measure; after 2 weeks, the outbreak was no more.  But since there were only 5 or a handful more cases, people took it as a sign the disease was nothing, not an indication the government did it right.  So the next time 5 new cases emerge, people will resist actions, then 5 turn into 50, 500, and the same old measure, applied belatedly, no longer suffices, reinforcing the thinking that it is either needless or useless.  The moral here is certainly not that the initial measure must not change, but that the cause-and-effect relationship can be hard to discern, especially when involving so many lay people.  But the question can be answered in a control experiment with different countries and diverse responses.        

So what can we learn from the ongoing control experiment(s)?  A lot truly, but here, only the obvious and straightforward ones.  As COVID-19 turns societies upside down, the biggest lesson is probably self-reflection and re-evaluation of long-held beliefs.  Because it emerged as a new virus, a learning curve was inevitable, and absorbing new knowledge and changing perceptions and strategies quickly is the key to any success.  Fortunately, much about the disease itself was established by late Feb, and the next 10 months of 2020 has offered little real progress, with the only major breakthrough being the vaccines. 

Countries fared poorly if they didn’t pay attention to the early events and findings in Jan and Feb, like those about tracing, quarantine, isolation, wearing masks, and asymptomatic carriers.  For example, asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic carriers are the norm rather than exception in infectious diseases, and COVID-19 is no different.  This was well-known in China and Germany, which published the first relevant but erroneous paper, by late Jan and early Feb, so testing people even without symptoms, and wearing masks are important to fight COVID-19. 

It was astounding that so many in the West did not know or faked not knowing asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic transmission even in April.  Moreover, most Western societies and the medical establishment hate mask wearing for the public, even though their reasoning is never convincing.  The worst the doctors can think of is that the public don’t know how to wear masks, but does any normal person needs 4 years’ medical school to learn wearing a mask properly?  Even Dr Fauci was revisionist when he said he didn’t recommend masks in Feb because he feared masks were in short supply.  He didn’t simply because it was the consensus at the time in the West and WHO that masks didn’t work!  That availability issue was always the last reason whenever masks were debated, and the more abundant surgical masks have been used in China and other places since Jan.  If they had had recommended masks early on, or at least not actively discouraged it in Feb and Mar, wearing masks likely might have become less a political issue in the US.  I’ve seen nobody arguing that masks offer 100% protection, but not wearing or wearing a mask may be the difference between being infected vs not, being seriously vs mildly sick, dead vs alive.  Fauci, CDC, and WHO have been taught no masking for ages, so that was their long-held belief.  They still deserved credit for reversing courses, better late than never, but the earlier, the better.

Globally, countries with a mask mandate early and consistently have fewer cases than those without.  Of course, the former also do other things as well.  China had a stunning Wuhan lockdown for 2.5 months.  Despite gleefully ridiculing China at the time, the West likely fell for the aforementioned pandemic paradox secretly: China used the totally ancient method of locking down and the totally useless mask wearing, and the result was not bad, so COVID-19 must be no big deal.  If COVID-19 in China was much worse than SARS, well, that just showed China’s sheer incompetence.  Thus, when COVID-19 struck in their own soil, and the West was so powerless, what else could they scapegoat their ineptness except to blame China for a coverup?  But since other countries did well against COVID-19 at the same time, one has to wonder why not everybody was duped by the ubiquitous Chinese coverup.

A separate but also related lesson is that the pandemic runs a scientific cause, and politicization is meaningless if not counterproductive: so much is human nature that race or ideology makes little difference at hospitals.  This is the most apparent when comparing the data and responses in China and subsequent ones from other countries.  In the well-publicized, chaotic days in Jan and early Feb, testing was limited, less reliable, and often available to only the very sick.  China also revised or updated the COVID-19 criteria and figures a couple of times.  As a result, some people knee-jerkingly asserted that China was hiding its cases.  But when the pandemic later broke out in the West, the exact same thing happened in every single country, often to a much greater extent.  Didn’t Italy, Spain, France, UK, and NYC experience the same or worse chaos in March and April?  Is there a country or state in the US that hasn’t revised its COVID-19 case and death numbers, some countless times since March?  Is there a country that can guarantee that its official case number is the real infection number?  Again, more self-reflection by the officials, media, and scientists, looking back at one’s own thinking and remarks in Jan-Mar, is necessary. 

A third lesson is that pandemic fatigue is real.  This makes perfect sense in psychiatry, but it is still revealing to see in real-time it unfolds and the vast, real-life consequences.  Since Sept, European and other countries are experiencing their 2^nd , 3^rd wave of infections.  One reason is that no country is safe until all are safe.  But a bigger problem is that people got tired and let down their guard, and didn’t do or finish the hard work necessary to drive down their domestic cases low enough to stop a large flareup. 

The control experiments, i.e., realities, also invalidate every single attack against China as 2020 labors on.  On the issue of COVID-19 origin, history, as the only control “experiment” available, is on China’s side.  For analogy, AIDS was first reported in the US, so is the US the origin of AIDS?  No.  Did anybody blame the US for releasing or letting HIV/AIDS “escape” to other countries?  No.  But on all other issues, the ongoing COVID-19 control experiments provide incontrovertible results.  The attacks on China’s incompetence fell apart quickly when those countries fumbled their own responses much worse, despite having at least one month’s advanced warning and head start.  Even more tellingly, remember the last fig leaf assertion that the Chinese coverup led to the West’s unpreparedness?  Here lies a paradoxical farce in the West that portrays China as being so powerful and yet so powerless at the same time.  The West has been mindlessly chanting Chinese coverup since early Jan, so apparently the almighty Chinese coverup didn’t work at all: if you cover up sth, you don't want others to know you do; if they do, then you fail.  Then, the West blamed the coverup for their own failure in March, April, and beyond, as if China was powerful enough to dictate these countries’ own COVID-19 policies, like China can tell the UK or US if, how, or what to lockdown, not to avoid crowds, wear masks, test, etc.  Which was after the great Chinese coverup had been blown away months ago!  Never mind there was no Chinese coverup amounting to anything.  But even if there were, how does one explain the 2^nd, 3^rd wave/surge in Europe, US, etc?  Was China covering up the first wave in the US and Europe too such that the US and Europe is having an even worse 2^nd and 3^rd wave/surge?  If they can’t even prevent and contain the 2^nd and 3^rd wave/surge, having ample experience in the spring already, what confidence should anyone have in them if they had had been the first to face COVID-19?  To top it off, looking back at history: was the 1918 pandemic a resounding success story? 

This winter will be tough, and vaccines are many countries’ only hope, whose effects won’t be apparent months from now.  But vaccines have been the only pleasant surprise in the whole 2020.  Who could have predicted in the spring that all kinds of vaccines, from different countries and with different designs, can achieve the similar efficacies at 80-95%?  This is among the best numbers in all vaccines in history, even though we didn’t even have one against any coVs before.  While no one has asked the question, I think why COVID-19 vaccines are so effective is because the unique feature of the virus.  Unlike most respiratory diseases, COVID-19 affects the respiratory system, circulation system, GI system, the kidney, pancreas, nervous system, etc.  The virus may depend on this pattern of systemic infection to reproduce, leading to a lasting, strong infection and pathology.  Thus, it is a well-known fact that COVID-19 patients don’t die as quickly as in similar diseases, and the virus can stay in one’s body for months even after he is “cured”.  Vaccines, by mounting an immune response all over the body, will be able to shut down widespread infection.  For example, even if a vaccine can only partly reduce infection in the lung, by better controlling infections at other organs because, e.g., those organs are more efficiently perfumed or more open to immune surveillance, virus replication is still sufficiently prevented or suppressed.  In other words, whole body infection is a weapon but also the Achilles heel of COVID-19, luckily exploited by the vaccines.

2020 is the year of COVID-19.  2020 is also the year of social sciences.  If there is a silver lining for 2020, conducting an unprecedented, control social experiment will be it.  So much is laid bare and so much can be learned, which before 2020 no one believed would be possible and had led to ageless and endless arguments to no avail.  Now, just a bit of fact-based reasoning is enough to see a great deal in the present and into the future.