Sunday, January 08, 2012

Short answer to stupid question

Glenn Greenwald writes,
(2) As for Drum’s insistence that it’s inherently wrong to ally with Paul for any reason, does that apply to Barney Frank, Alan Grayson, and Dennis Kucinich, all of whom have done exactly that? Indeed, in 2008 Kucinich said he would consider Paul for his Vice Presidential pick (Paul said the same about Kucinich).
Yes. Slightly longer answer: Greenwald of course confuses the position of a politician and that of an advocate. He writes, after a great deal of blather about "crazy" (refusing to consider Drum's argument that Paul's positions are in effect due to the paranoid strain in American politics),
why doesn’t Drum unveil the roster of national political figures with a serious platform who are making these points instead?
But as Drum showed, Paul is a bad advocate for the ideas Greenwald wants discussed, due to his racism, his nutty beliefs, his anti-Semitic/homophobic/etc comments, etc. etc. Plus of course that Paul's a poor advocate for Greenwald because he doesn't actually get to positions Greenwald likes for reasons he could countenance. Either Greenwald needs to find a (for some reason satisfactory) person with a national presence who's not a crank, or he needs to cast his lot with folks like Grayson and Sanders who, if not perfect in his eyes, can move the conversation in the direction he wants without deserved repulsion from the left.