Whether you are a Trump supporter or not, I appreciate the NYTimes having the journalistic integrity to print this. The current media urge to uncritically bash Trump at every opportunity--whether substantiated by evidence or not--is very real. I am not a Trump supporter.
Greenwald:
>1) Trump presidency is dangerous.
>2) CIA/DeepState abuse of spy powers to subvert elected Govt is dangerous.
The article reads more apologetic than anything. "True, the deep state is sabotaging Trump, in principle a bad thing, but here are a lot of good reasons why they would do that."
In fact it is the typical hypocrisy: We like our democratic system, greatest in the world. Except when things don't go the way we want - then it's okay to circumvent it.
>So is the United States seeing the rise of its own deep state?
>Not quite, experts say, but the echoes are real — and disturbing.
I don't agree with the NYT here. 8 years ago I'd think the below linked juxtaposition of American leaders was a bit paranoid. Today I think it's more important than ever. Eisenhower warned us of the Deep State. Truman warned us of it. JFK warned us of it, said he was going to destroy it, and was assassinated.
I wouldn't call that hypocrisy per se. Democracy is not an end in itself, and it's quite possible that a conviction/ideal/value is considered more important to someone.
Now whether it's a good idea to (potentially) damage the democratic system because of those ideals is a more complicated issue. I think sometimes yes.
Of course, in context of the NYTimes it might well be considered hypocrisy.
Damaging democracy to impose your ideal on the majority is called tyranny. Simply put, you are a totalitarian. Now note that I am not judging. I'm just trying to be accurate and to the point.
I'm absolutely not in favor of totalitarianism, and I don't really see why you'd jump to that extreme right away. But perhaps I was just too vague.
What I meant to say was that there are many scenarios where a person's own moral beliefs conflict with a democratically elected government's stance, and the moral beliefs win out. I belief that in some cases that is justified, and I also belief that believing so is not even close to being in favor of totalitarianism. I'm speaking of individual convictions, not making some claim about how to rule a society.
Some examples where I feel moral beliefs rightly trump the democratic consensus:
- a couple I know taking in asylum seekers about a decade ago because of a whole complicated kerfuffle, risking quite a bit because it's against the law.
- releasing classified documents such as these
- downloading tons of JSTOR publications because they should be publicly accessible
- the many people engaging in unsanctioned but otherwise peaceful protest, often leading to arrest.
Edit: In hindsight I could've simplified this comment by saying that it is an unfair and somewhat incendiary leap to equate promoting totalitarianism with a personal moral belief applied to specific circumstances.
It's a tricky issue, someone like myself might argue that activist judges who believe in "living, breathing documents" is somewhat tyrannical as such decisions should be legislated instead while the courts stick to trying to interpret the law as it was intended.
For the case of gay marriage, I don't believe the constitution is written so as to exclude it as a valid marital contract.
I think it's good that the times is printing this, but I also think that it is good that the bureaucracy is resisting Trump. Flynn was a bit of a nut job, so this seems like a good place to resist. While there's a lot of anger, it seems that in general people are resisting things that seem atrociously stupid.
I can accept that there may be some good in the bureaucracy resisting Trump. But for the long term, I worry that encouraging the bureaucracy now will come back to haunt us after Trump is gone.
>But for the long term, I worry that encouraging the bureaucracy now will come back to haunt us after Trump is gone.
I also worry about that. Once you put personal convenience above the rule of law and order, you pave the way for everyone to throw justice aside, paving the way to the path to tyranny.
Greenwald:
>1) Trump presidency is dangerous. >2) CIA/DeepState abuse of spy powers to subvert elected Govt is dangerous.
> One can cogently believe both.
Source: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/831850140940005377