I'm guessing that many of our readers who use Facebook have discovered that at least one friend has posted a link to Glenn Greenwald's Salon article, WikiLeaks Reveals More Than Just Government Secrets. As a public service for those of you who haven't seen the essay and have cocktail parties this weekend - or perhaps want to read a little pushback to the master narrative - I'm posting a link. Interestingly, using Facebook as a dataset, this piece seems to have gained traction from friends on both the left and the libertarian right. The first 'graph sets the stage:
The WikiLeaks disclosure has revealed not only numerous government secrets, but also the driving mentality of major factions in our political and media class. Simply put, there are few countries in the world with citizenries and especially media outlets more devoted to serving, protecting and venerating government authorities than the U.S. Indeed, I don't quite recall any entity producing as much bipartisan contempt across the American political spectrum as WikiLeaks has: as usual, for authoritarian minds, those who expose secrets are far more hated than those in power who commit heinous acts using secrecy as their principal weapon.
Overwrought? Those are Defense Secretary Robert Gates' words.
It took me a while to figure out that the quoted words were not quoted from Robert Gates (which would have made it a really interesting thing to be said by a sitting Secretary of Defense) but from Glenn Greenwald.
"Overwrought" is Robert Gates' word (albeit in a slightly different sense, dismissing the sky-is-falling reaction). The quoted "words" are Greenwald's from Greenwald's interesting article.
Posted by: Anon | December 02, 2010 at 08:10 PM