the reactions to this thread, which btw I fully stand by, prove my main critique of @ggreenwald's conception of politics: that the "liberal-left" is too weak to accomplishment anything re opposing power centers, ergo we must ally w/ the "populist right"
https://twitter.com/zei_squirrel/status/1374157616046350337
I believe that as a consequence of adopting this faulty and fundamentally liberal conception of politics 2/3 years ago, glenn has begun to indulge reactionary cultural politics that he used to revile and call out in ways he'd now say are expressions of "woke sjw cancel culture" 
and the reason for this is partly because he believes that by engaging with this cultural politics, he may further the project of the "populist right and left alliance". but as I and others have pointed out, there is no such thing as a "populist right". it is a mirage, a front
josh hawley, tom cotton, tucker carlson et al. are just traditional republicans cosplaying as populists by peppering in some anti-elite soundbites in between their constant, pathological, deranged racist, sexist, anti-lgbtq rants, which comprise 99.9% of their output for a reason
by indulging their grift and their base, which only cares about the reactionary cultural politics and finds the rest of the "populist" stuff to be side-issues they'd gladly leave behind, you only accomplish alienating yourself from the so-called "liberal-left", and gain nothing
incidentally this is another point of critique I have often levelled at glenn: the notion of "liberal-left" is incoherent. there is a clear difference between cynical liberal scumfucks, and leftists of whatever stripe (anarchist/socialist/communist). conflating the two is asinine
and it's bc of this conflation that you end up w/ generalizing cynical deployments of neoliberal "identity politics" by liberals, for example calling bernie and corbyn racist and sexist while shielding actual racists and sexists liberals from criticism, to the left
glenn's response to this critique would be that policy-wise he remains a committed leftist, so all the indulging of reactionary cultural politics doesn't matter. but it does. it undermines the fundamental value he himself claims he wants to realize: to oppose power centers
bc only the left is principally committed to this aim. just today one of these "populist" republicans in the senate came out against biden's FTC appointment even though they have good anti-trust credentials. why? bc they're bought and sold by their donors
https://twitter.com/viaCristiano/status/1369304310350286858
glenn extends the principle of charity so easily to these grifters. and he doesn't just do it on the republican side either. early in the dem primaries mayo pete threw out some populist-sounding rhetoric and glenn was boosting him, which I called out as bizarre. same w/ yang
btw this is why I said this is a fundamentally liberal conception of politics: everything is perceived in terms of a poli-sci type calculus, believing vapid superficial rhetoric is sincere, that we need to "reach out to the moderate/republican voter". this is peak liberalbrain
there's also a national component w/ glenn that is strange to me. he seems to uniquely apply this analysis to the US, but I don't see the reasoning for it. we just saw what "right-wing populism" in office entails: tax cuts for the rich, racist, sexist and anti-lgbtq legislation
which is exactly what a hawley/cotton/carlson type admin will look like if they manage to get into office. anyway, I'll write about this in a more structured way later, but someone whose views on this I basically 100% agree with is @CarlBeijer, and they're very much worth reading
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