Excellent article and an accurate -- and chilling -- description of tyranny.
What Nietzsche said : “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
And from C.S. Lewis: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
The left's take on 1/6 follows their normal pattern.
They take something that has a kernel of truth to it, and then exaggerate it beyond all recognition. They then conflate that kernel of truth with the exaggeration and demand you accept the exaggerated narrative as truth. If you disagree with their interpretation or their policy solutions they'll accuse you of denying the kernel of truth.
They pull the same shit with global warming, privilege, externalities and systemic racism.
You are doing something rare and precious--seeking the truth and following where it leads. Thank you. You stand out profoundly in our era of Orwellian propaganda that is still called news. May your tribe increase. With respect and gratitude--Bob Newell
Thanks again for a great piece. If you tell Americans that a violent riot in the wake of a protest is the worst terrorist attack on our nation - right up there with our foreign enemies attacking us - that led to WAR - most Americans look at that and think: well what the hell was the Summer of 2020 when protests and riots were urgent, violent, necessary and rewarded by our government not just with policy but completely institutional overhaul, from Hollywood to Coca-cola, to every university, and even in the medical industries and research labs. Billions have been poured into the cause, and going along with that was the urgent message of 2020: that this country is a white supremacist hell hole that has to be rebuilt from the ground up.
Why wouldn't people think a violent protest was the way to go after the summer of 2020?
Autonomous zones, people dying, people defending their stores and themselves all the while the democrats were saying it was "mostly peaceful" and a "racial reckoning." Maybe at the NY Times and on cable news they simply forget what we all saw. But most people with common sense haven't forgotten. So they see Biden and Harris as blatant unapologetic hypocrites. Suddenly they care about the police. Now they are arguing against political violence. I don't think the majority is going to buy it and I think it worked against them -- except in the way you point out here.
It was more than just an embarrassing thing to watch - which it was. They are about to get much more authoritarian. All because a political outsider, sloppy though he may be, challenged the established order.
Great article. It is a stunning irony that Warmonger Junior and her father, Satan, are dragged out to be embraced as heroes of the Democrats. This is why I became a GREEN in the mid 90's. After watching Clinton "reform" welfare, criminal sentencing, credit card debt and wall street rules, I had seen enough of neoliberal madness to read the writing on the wall. The recent sprint toward authoritarianism by the Dems is not particularly a surprise, but it is the low point of our national quest for a free society.
Matt, as a Trump supporter and Republican since I was old enough to vote, I've been meaning to write for some time to say thank-you. I doubt we agree on many things policy wise, but I bet we would have a fun debate without hating each other at the end of it! I specifically pay for your insights because you are but a handful of reporters I actually trust these days. And yes, I find it ironic that I was a defender of Dick Cheney 'back in the day." I feel, like Adina Haun (commenter below me) angry that I was so blind for so long to the uniparty who had little interest in the betterment of the country, rather the betterment of their bank accounts and power. This is the part the progressive left do not seem to understand nor want to understand. We didn't vote for Trump because we liked him, we voted for Trump because he wasn't them. And we have been proven correct in our distrust now over and over and over again. I didn't watch any of the 1/6 madness because I knew what it would be like. That said, the fact that Cheney was there is, indeed, terrifying.
We need to face it -- Dick Cheney is flat out evil. He was in-charge of George W. Bush's VP search committee and to no one's shock or amazement he determined that "HE" was, in fact, the best choice to be VP. Need I say more?
Dick Cheney has every bit the huge ego of Donald Trump, but he has in spades what Trump lacked: the Deep State knowledge and credibility to bend it in any way he wants...
For Trump, everything was (and remains) about Trump. In many ways, his presidency typifies the dog that caught the car. There was no grand plan - that's not Trump. He concocted his plan as he went along, which explains why he got 'shot-up' so often by the Deep State.
As for Dick Cheney, he is all about the 'ends justify the means' and he knows exactly how to leverage the Deep State to get there. Clearly Cheney had a vision of the "New World Order," and critically, the massive ego to believe that only HE was capable of bringing it forth while destroying anyone (real or perceived) that might be standing in his way -- that is the quintessential definition of a dictator...
Obama inherited Cheney's tools and further weaponized the intelligence state.
As we sit here today, can anyone honestly say that they have MORE trust in any of the 'intelligence' entities (CIA, NSA, FBI, DOJ, etc.)?
This is why people like Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald and others have challenged the way the MSM propaganda narrative is characterizing events. As Matt points out, those MSM characterizations are being used as the rationale for further "technological elimination" of democracy... Thus, no surprise that Cheney is right there, front and center in full support.
Let's hope more people start questioning things by THINKING for themselves before it's too late.
At this point, the people who actually believe that the canting pieties about 1/6 are genuine are the same people who have votive candles with Anthony Fauci's face on them.
Wonderful, you're in fine form. All i could think of when i heard the likes of that flaming douchebag Schiff kissing the Cheney ring was "You're doing amazing, sweetie."
You danced around it here, but the extension of Cheney's kill list was Obama's Terror Tuesdays. We're already there, we've already been there.
Also, for me, creepier than "door to door" was the government pairing with SMS providers to spy on our texts.
Serious, if probably rhetorical, question - do Pelosi et al really think that this pathetic bit of kabuki is going to pile up the votes the next two elections? What could possibly go wrong. Greenwald did a fine job of trolling them yesterday.
I swear, if given half an opportunity I would bludgeon the skull of anyone saying that Assange violated the Espionage Act. The man was never on U.S. soil - a rather essential element in committing an offense under U.S. law. Our criminal justice system does not legitimately exceed our territorial control. Team America indeed - fuck yeah!
Jan. 6 was a re-run of the Oct. 6, 2018 "occupation" of the Senate by anti-Kavanaugh protesters. The mistake of the Trump supporters was in thinking the government would treat them as leniantly as it did the nice white-collar types who temporarily blocked the Senate from carrying out its duties in voting on a Supreme Court nominee.
Articles like this are the reason a man of meager means, like myself, pays to subscribe to your substack, Matt. Like John said, “just give me some truth…”. Not to be corny, but these days it is hard to find real journalism. I appreciate your work and many thanks to the creator of Substack.
I loved the headline where it proclaimed he was deeply disappointed with Republican leadership. Gosh Dick, when you were part of Republican leadership - lots of us were deeply disappointed with it too.
It took me far too long to realize the reality of the term “deep state”. Cheney is a personification of deep state. He came up with the “yellow cake uranium” lie to force an unprovoked war that pissed the whole world off. But Dick’s company, Halliburton, came out of that war 39 billion dollars richer. Dick and Liz and the rest of the deep staters hate Trump because he is not easily controlled. They would rather have puppets like Biden and George W Bush who will just stand up and say what they are told. Deep staters are from both parties and most of them are very wealthy………..Pelosi, McConnell, Romney, the Clintons, and Adam Schiff-for-brains. Wars make big money for people and corporations who have the right connections. The deep state now includes corporations, the Pentagon, and now the mainstream media. Democracy is almost completely crushed under the weight of those behemouths.
Democrats as a species seem to need a constant flow of validation that they are righteous and good. They are needy that way. Possibly because they know that they are neither, but more likely because they just own those baked-in personality flaws. They would be easy to manipulate because of this malady if only their wrongness did not risk the end of the free world. It does. However, all someone has to do is tell them that their politics are pretty and the love will flow. But slip up and tell them the truth... that those jeans make their butt look fat... and the evil claws come out and they will not rest until they scratch out your eyes and leave you bloody and dead on the ground. The Cheneys use to tell the Democrats that their butts looked fat, but now they tell them that their politics are pretty. So the love flows.
A Tale of Two Authoritarians
Excellent article and an accurate -- and chilling -- description of tyranny.
What Nietzsche said : “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
And from C.S. Lewis: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
The left's take on 1/6 follows their normal pattern.
They take something that has a kernel of truth to it, and then exaggerate it beyond all recognition. They then conflate that kernel of truth with the exaggeration and demand you accept the exaggerated narrative as truth. If you disagree with their interpretation or their policy solutions they'll accuse you of denying the kernel of truth.
They pull the same shit with global warming, privilege, externalities and systemic racism.
Matt Taibbi,
You are doing something rare and precious--seeking the truth and following where it leads. Thank you. You stand out profoundly in our era of Orwellian propaganda that is still called news. May your tribe increase. With respect and gratitude--Bob Newell
Thanks again for a great piece. If you tell Americans that a violent riot in the wake of a protest is the worst terrorist attack on our nation - right up there with our foreign enemies attacking us - that led to WAR - most Americans look at that and think: well what the hell was the Summer of 2020 when protests and riots were urgent, violent, necessary and rewarded by our government not just with policy but completely institutional overhaul, from Hollywood to Coca-cola, to every university, and even in the medical industries and research labs. Billions have been poured into the cause, and going along with that was the urgent message of 2020: that this country is a white supremacist hell hole that has to be rebuilt from the ground up.
Why wouldn't people think a violent protest was the way to go after the summer of 2020?
Autonomous zones, people dying, people defending their stores and themselves all the while the democrats were saying it was "mostly peaceful" and a "racial reckoning." Maybe at the NY Times and on cable news they simply forget what we all saw. But most people with common sense haven't forgotten. So they see Biden and Harris as blatant unapologetic hypocrites. Suddenly they care about the police. Now they are arguing against political violence. I don't think the majority is going to buy it and I think it worked against them -- except in the way you point out here.
It was more than just an embarrassing thing to watch - which it was. They are about to get much more authoritarian. All because a political outsider, sloppy though he may be, challenged the established order.
Great article. It is a stunning irony that Warmonger Junior and her father, Satan, are dragged out to be embraced as heroes of the Democrats. This is why I became a GREEN in the mid 90's. After watching Clinton "reform" welfare, criminal sentencing, credit card debt and wall street rules, I had seen enough of neoliberal madness to read the writing on the wall. The recent sprint toward authoritarianism by the Dems is not particularly a surprise, but it is the low point of our national quest for a free society.
Matt, as a Trump supporter and Republican since I was old enough to vote, I've been meaning to write for some time to say thank-you. I doubt we agree on many things policy wise, but I bet we would have a fun debate without hating each other at the end of it! I specifically pay for your insights because you are but a handful of reporters I actually trust these days. And yes, I find it ironic that I was a defender of Dick Cheney 'back in the day." I feel, like Adina Haun (commenter below me) angry that I was so blind for so long to the uniparty who had little interest in the betterment of the country, rather the betterment of their bank accounts and power. This is the part the progressive left do not seem to understand nor want to understand. We didn't vote for Trump because we liked him, we voted for Trump because he wasn't them. And we have been proven correct in our distrust now over and over and over again. I didn't watch any of the 1/6 madness because I knew what it would be like. That said, the fact that Cheney was there is, indeed, terrifying.
We need to face it -- Dick Cheney is flat out evil. He was in-charge of George W. Bush's VP search committee and to no one's shock or amazement he determined that "HE" was, in fact, the best choice to be VP. Need I say more?
Dick Cheney has every bit the huge ego of Donald Trump, but he has in spades what Trump lacked: the Deep State knowledge and credibility to bend it in any way he wants...
For Trump, everything was (and remains) about Trump. In many ways, his presidency typifies the dog that caught the car. There was no grand plan - that's not Trump. He concocted his plan as he went along, which explains why he got 'shot-up' so often by the Deep State.
As for Dick Cheney, he is all about the 'ends justify the means' and he knows exactly how to leverage the Deep State to get there. Clearly Cheney had a vision of the "New World Order," and critically, the massive ego to believe that only HE was capable of bringing it forth while destroying anyone (real or perceived) that might be standing in his way -- that is the quintessential definition of a dictator...
Obama inherited Cheney's tools and further weaponized the intelligence state.
As we sit here today, can anyone honestly say that they have MORE trust in any of the 'intelligence' entities (CIA, NSA, FBI, DOJ, etc.)?
This is why people like Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald and others have challenged the way the MSM propaganda narrative is characterizing events. As Matt points out, those MSM characterizations are being used as the rationale for further "technological elimination" of democracy... Thus, no surprise that Cheney is right there, front and center in full support.
Let's hope more people start questioning things by THINKING for themselves before it's too late.
At this point, the people who actually believe that the canting pieties about 1/6 are genuine are the same people who have votive candles with Anthony Fauci's face on them.
Wonderful, you're in fine form. All i could think of when i heard the likes of that flaming douchebag Schiff kissing the Cheney ring was "You're doing amazing, sweetie."
You danced around it here, but the extension of Cheney's kill list was Obama's Terror Tuesdays. We're already there, we've already been there.
Also, for me, creepier than "door to door" was the government pairing with SMS providers to spy on our texts.
Serious, if probably rhetorical, question - do Pelosi et al really think that this pathetic bit of kabuki is going to pile up the votes the next two elections? What could possibly go wrong. Greenwald did a fine job of trolling them yesterday.
I swear, if given half an opportunity I would bludgeon the skull of anyone saying that Assange violated the Espionage Act. The man was never on U.S. soil - a rather essential element in committing an offense under U.S. law. Our criminal justice system does not legitimately exceed our territorial control. Team America indeed - fuck yeah!
Jan. 6 was a re-run of the Oct. 6, 2018 "occupation" of the Senate by anti-Kavanaugh protesters. The mistake of the Trump supporters was in thinking the government would treat them as leniantly as it did the nice white-collar types who temporarily blocked the Senate from carrying out its duties in voting on a Supreme Court nominee.
Articles like this are the reason a man of meager means, like myself, pays to subscribe to your substack, Matt. Like John said, “just give me some truth…”. Not to be corny, but these days it is hard to find real journalism. I appreciate your work and many thanks to the creator of Substack.
I loved the headline where it proclaimed he was deeply disappointed with Republican leadership. Gosh Dick, when you were part of Republican leadership - lots of us were deeply disappointed with it too.
It took me far too long to realize the reality of the term “deep state”. Cheney is a personification of deep state. He came up with the “yellow cake uranium” lie to force an unprovoked war that pissed the whole world off. But Dick’s company, Halliburton, came out of that war 39 billion dollars richer. Dick and Liz and the rest of the deep staters hate Trump because he is not easily controlled. They would rather have puppets like Biden and George W Bush who will just stand up and say what they are told. Deep staters are from both parties and most of them are very wealthy………..Pelosi, McConnell, Romney, the Clintons, and Adam Schiff-for-brains. Wars make big money for people and corporations who have the right connections. The deep state now includes corporations, the Pentagon, and now the mainstream media. Democracy is almost completely crushed under the weight of those behemouths.
Where the Gov't used to invent wars against foreigners to enrich Big Oil, it now invents wars against Americans to enrich Big Pharma.
Democrats as a species seem to need a constant flow of validation that they are righteous and good. They are needy that way. Possibly because they know that they are neither, but more likely because they just own those baked-in personality flaws. They would be easy to manipulate because of this malady if only their wrongness did not risk the end of the free world. It does. However, all someone has to do is tell them that their politics are pretty and the love will flow. But slip up and tell them the truth... that those jeans make their butt look fat... and the evil claws come out and they will not rest until they scratch out your eyes and leave you bloody and dead on the ground. The Cheneys use to tell the Democrats that their butts looked fat, but now they tell them that their politics are pretty. So the love flows.