Looking Forward to the Exciting Sequel to CitizenFour

 

Maybe "Citizen Four II:  2 Fast 2 Treasonous"?

It would have to be fictionalized, of course, so someone would have to buy the rights to the name "Citizen Four" from whoever owns it.  And I'm not so sure that, Oliver Stone, the writer/director of the fictionalized Snowden handjob biopic, could be induced to come onboard for the project, but surely someone could be found.

And given the events of the last six years, I'm also not sure that  Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zachary Quinto would be real jazzed about reprising their roles as Snowden and Glenn Greenwald respectively,  but there are enough hungry actors out there who will work for screen credit and craft services that this shouldn't be a problem.

Add it all up and it seem perfect for the Blumhouse business model: a movie production company which makes money by producing a ton of cheap, forgettable, crap movies for under $5M.  Their business model is keeping Hulu’s movie library stocked buffet-style.  Marginally edible stuff but a lot of it, all introduced as “From The Producers of 1-2 pretty successful movies you may have heard of”.  Hulu is paying for the illusion of scale and prestige, and a Snowden sequel seems made to order.

Hell, for high five-figures I could knock out the screenplay for it in two weeks or less.

Of course none of this would've come up and I would have had no earthly reason to hunt up this 8-year-old graphic from my archives, if this story hadn't broken today.  From the WaPo:

Putin grants citizenship to Edward Snowden, who disclosed U.S. surveillance

As happens every so often, when I go looking around my archives, I run across other stuff that catches my eye.  This time, as I hunted up Putin/Snowden/Greenwald graphics from that period, I also spent some unproductive time wandering through my comment section from the same era , and, my oh my was your old pal "droneglass" ever unpopular with many of my savvy Liberal "allies".

I was a drooling jackbooted Obot.  A bloodthirsty monster who cheered on the murder of innocent women and children.  Didn't I realize what was at stake?  Didn't I realize how Evil the Obama Administration was?  Had all my years of blogging been a lie?  I was a slavering tool of the corporate media -- nearly as bad as Maureen Dowd -- and was motivated entirely by my seething jealousy of Glenn Greenwald.  

And this went on.  For years.  I kept writing about it, and the critical commenters kept escalating,, which be neither here nor there except  that this site and my podcast are entirely reader and listener supported.  There are no sponsors.  No ads.  No publications, think tanks, universities or other institutes underwriting any of it.  Just you lovely people hitting the tip jar when/if you can.  So the material and reputational damage from all of this incoming fire from my "allies" was considerable and long lasting.

On the other hand. all I have ever guaranteed in this site is that, to the best of my abilities I will tell you what things look like to me from out here in the cheap seats.   Or, in the words of my friend, the late Harlan Ellison:

A man does not write one novel at a time or even one quatrain at a time. He is engaged in the long process of putting his whole life on paper. He is on a journey and he is reporting in: ‘This is where I think I am and this is what this place looks like today.’

So I wrote about what I saw and where I thought things were going. and this went on for a long time. Then -- first a little at a time, and then all at once -- Greenwald's mask fell away and he came fully out as Tucker Carlson's frequent wacky sidekick on Carlson's White Power Hour.  

Which tracked exactly with my savage Liberal critics slowly and then quickly drifting away. Off to get very, very angry at someone else over something else I suppose.  

Telling wasn't enough.   Showing article after article making the point wasn't enough.  Only Greenwald repeatedly showing his ass on Fox News was finally enough.  

There's probably a lesson there somewhere.

For me, a chance to apply that lesson again came almost immediately, back when, instead of Liberals who had been right all along being asked to opine about the rise of Trump, very- recently-former Republicans began filling those positions, effectively colonizing cable news and the op-ed pages of American newspapers.  Back when the Lincoln Project was literally birthed by MSNBC thanks to the millions of dollars in free, glowing publicity they lavished on Republican sleaze merchants like Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson for pirating +40 years of Liberal critiques of the GOP and passing it all off as their own brilliant, original, cutting-edge analysis.  

All of which stank.  On ice.  After all, these people had been driven out of their own party by the very  monsters they had created.  In fact they had built entire careers out of creating such monsters, then lying about the existence of those monsters and attacking anyone who tried to warn the public that such monsters were a real and growing threat.  

And once those monsters finally kicked down the laboratory doors and began rampaging openly across the countryside, those same people who had sworn their were no monsters were suddenly everywhere.  All over the media like a rash, controlling the narrative.  And that narrative came down to variations of three talking points:

First, none of this was really there fault.   This whole "The entire GOP coming out as monsters and monster enablers" was completely inexplicable and no one could have seen it coming.

Second, the only way for Democrats to beat the monsters was the shut up and let these very-recently-former Republicans run everything.

Third, send money!  Like and subscribe to our podcast/newsletters/YouTube pages which are suddenly everywhere!  Buy our books!  Make checks payable to "The Lincoln Project".  And so forth.  

Once again, your humble host did not approve of any of this for reasons I won't relitigate here. 

And once again I wrote about it.  Repeatedly.  

And once again, the comments arrived.

Didn't I realize what was at stake?  Didn't I realize how Evil the Trump Administration was?  Had all my years of blogging been a lie?  I was a brain-dead fool.  After all, it's all hands on deck now!  Why couldn't I see that the enemy of my enemy is my something something?  Worse than a mainstream media hack, and was motivated entirely by my seething jealousy of Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson.  

It was weird.   

I tried to reassure them that my little blog out here in the cornfield has no influence on anything or anyone.  And that however clear and well-founded my suspicions may be, they were as nothing compared to the massive national audiences and huge financial resources these very-recently-former Republicans now commanded thanks to the staggering amount of free hype they were getting from the "Liberal" media every day.  

At best, I am the DART spacecraft, managing to hit the tiny moon of a tiny asteroid,  Hella accurate, but the net effect is negligible.  Virtually invisible.  If the tiny nudge from my blog were allowed to compound uninterrupted by other factors for thousands of years, well that might accomplish something mighty.

But back here in the real world even Matthew Dowd -- the undisputed king of toxic network teevee Both Siderism during the 2016 election -- has had his past erased and his career revived thanks entirely to his insider relationships with people like MSNBC's Nicole Wallace...and no one cared.  Trust me when I tell you that nothing I said or did had any effect on the successful laundering of Mr. Dowd's  garbage reputation, so please, please take comfort in that fact, and don't let anything I have to say keep you from helping to fund even more Lincoln Project Liberal political porn videos that don't actually affect elections in any way. or spoil your worship of Joe Scarborough, Bill Kristol and Charlie Sykes as Heroes of the Resistance.  

Nothing was ever settled, but events did take the course I thought they would take.

For example, during the run-up to the 2020 election, the Lincoln Project raised nearly $100M from credulous Liberals by repeatedly insisting that Democrats were feckless idiots and that they and only they knew how to win elections.  And after the smoke cleared, the Lincoln Lads had accomplished nothing.  Then came the sexual predator scandal.  And the coverup.  But for all of that, the Lincoln Lads used their money and the absurd amount of free media the cable news handed them to carve out a profitable niche for themselves in the political firmament.  

Also and as predicted, Never Trumpers have became part of the landscape that no one questions anymore.  The Bulwark is now practically a subsidiary of MSNBC. 

Trump exists to normalize Bill Kristol

— Driftglass, Guardian of Inconvenient History (@Mr_Electrico) July 11, 2017

And Both Siderism is making a comeback, while actual Liberal voices are still systematically elbowed out of the conversation.

Unless we act now, after #TrumpCrash Both Siderism will be back w/ a vengeance with Kristol/Will/etc one 1 "side" & Fox News the other.

— Driftglass, Guardian of Inconvenient History (@Mr_Electrico) July 28, 2017

I'm not sure where the next big and dangerously toxic political hotness is coming from, although I have my suspicions.

What I am sure of is that, if I have good reason to believe the Next Big Thing is bullshit, I will write about it here.

And like ants at a picnic, that writing will be followed by a steady column of earnest commenters lining up to tell me how wrong I am.  

I mean. don't I realize what is at stake?  

And can't I see how evil that the K'rupt Duopoly is?    

 I shall be cursed as worse than a mainstream media hack.

And obviously motivated entirely by my seething jealousy of Andrew Yang :-)

I Am The Liberal Media