Friedman has become so bad, with each week's column being more illogical, vacuous, and non-sensical, that I actually at one point started to doubt that Tom Friedman actually existed. It appeared that he was simply an algorithm which spit out words and pithy phrases and arranged them into a column twice weekly.
But today's article took the whole Friedman experience to an entirely new level. His column about Edward Snowden and Vladamir Putin's chance to make a second impression ("You only get one chance to make a second impression" starts the column in a typical Friedmanesque turn of phrase) is so full of factual errors and illogical conclusions that the only explanation I can come up with is that Tom Friedman lives in a parallel universe not accessible to the rest of us. You can read the article here if you must. However, I will dissect the second paragraph (just one paragraph) to show how different these parallel universes are. (I have to confess that after reading the second paragraph of the article my brain exploded rendering me incapable of taking in any more of the article).
First sentence.
"Considering the breadth of reforms that President Obama is now proposing to prevent privacy abuses in intelligence gathering, in the wake of Snowden's disclosures, Snowden deserves a chance to make a second impression -- that he truly is a whistle-blower, not a traitor."
Whew! That first sentence is a whopper. I won't try to diagram it due to lack of space and out of respect to the English language, but I'm going to have to take the sentence apart just to analyse the myriad of untruths it contains.
First off, Friedman suggests that the reforms that Obama proposed are actually significant. I'm sure that there are many who share the Friedman Universe who would agree with him. For instance, fellow NYT columnist David Brooks would likely provide a sympathetic ear to this argument. However, outside of this Bizzarro Friedmanverse, or MSNBC, you would be hard pressed to find anyone who agrees that Obama's proposals are more than window dressing. For instance, perhaps Friedman could have read the editorial published immediately after the President's speech by his own newspaper which assailed the proposals as "tinkering around the edges of the nation's abusive surveillance programs."
This leads to another incredibly frustrating thing that I have noticed. It seems that for the rabid loyalist Obama followers (I didn't call them Obamabots) for the President to say something is the same as the President doing something. This, of course, to anyone who has been conscious for the last five years is the opposite of reality. In fact, it has gotten to the point where if President Obama says something, you can rest assured that he is going to do the complete opposite (perhaps this is why he is so admiring of Larry Summers, but I digress).
The very idea that the President has proposed reforms that will prevent privacy abuses in intelligence gathering ignores the fact that it was the President who ordered the abuses in the first place. It's not like this happened by accident. It's not that the President didn't know this was going on. His Justice Department developed this plan, the President included these proposals in the reauthorization of the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act. He is the one who came up with the damn program, and now you are lauding him for trying to prevent the abuses that he caused?
OK. Deep breath. Next phrase.
Friedman slips in the phrase "in the wake of Snowden's disclosures." So I guess somewhere in the ether of the Friedmanverse there is some acknowledgement that Snowden deserves some credit for bringing about these wide-ranging (look at their breadth) reforms being proposed. However, this is completely blown away by the fact that he then says he "deserves chance to make a second impression -- that he truly is a whistleblower, not a traitor."
I assume by all of this second impression theme that Snowden's first impession on Friedman was not a good one. Apparently his first impression on Friedman was that Snowden was a traitor. This, despite the fact that his disclosures have led to the wonderful reforms that will protect all of our privacy. Apparently in the Friedmanverse, informing Americans that their government is collecting data on every phone call you make, every e-mail you send, and everywhere you go on the internet, means that you are a traitor. But, Friedman's a good guy and he'll give you a second chance to show you live up to the dictates of the Friedmanverse.
Next sentence.
"The fact is, he dumped his data and fled to countries that are hostile to us and to the very principles he espoused."
I didn't think it was possible to outdo the first sentence. However Tom Friedman never ducks from a challenge and he met this one with gusto. Whereas the first sentence was merely intellectually, if not factually, dishonest, the second sentence simply wrings the neck of logic until logic is left lying on the floor, unconscious with its last death rattle slowly escaping its body.
Apparently in the Friedmanverse, a fact is a fact simply if Friedman states it is a fact. Glenn Greenwald took issue with this "fact" in a tweet this morning, stating:
"Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald
Greenwald's mistake is thinking that "facts" as we define them have anything to do with "facts" in the Friedmanverse. To Friedman, apparently carefully selecting documents that prove the mass surveillance of millions upon millions of Americans by their own government without probable cause or due process to two carefully selected reporters and doing so in such a way that these files were protected from being received by anyone other than those two carefully selected reporters is the definition of "dumping data."
Now, here is where logic really takes leave in the Friedmanverse. Friedman then says that Snowden fled to countries that are hostile to us and to the very principles he espoused. Let's think about that a second. Snowden as is well known fled to Hong Kong, which is in the People's Republic of China, and then to Russia where he was forced to remain by the fact that the U.S. revoked his passport and threatened every country which was offering Snowden safe haven (it is probable that Snowden was on his way to Ecuador when he stopped in Russia, but was unable to continue his journey due to the U.S. government's actions).
Friedman states that these countries are hostile to the U.S. and to the very principles he espoused. Let's think about that for a minute. There's no doubt that Russia and China are two of the world's "bad guys." They treat their people badly, their policies both domestically and internationally are in opposition to ours, and they support some of the world's worst groups. So, ok. Russia and China are bad. But, there is also no irony in the Friedmanverse. Because if there was, it would become clear rather quickly that saying that these countries, which allowed Snowden to remain free from the United States government and granted him political asylum were not actually acting in a way that was hostile to the principles Snowden espoused. The country that was seeking to arrest and imprison Snowden was actually the one that was acting against these principles.
Next sentence.
"To make a second impression, Snowden would need to come home, make his case and face his accusers."
OK. A quick aside. Does anyone else get tickled in the fact that Tom Friedman actually has thought about how Snowden's action personally affected him? I mean really. It seems that Snowden's worst crime in the Friedmanverse was that he made a bad first impression on Tom Friedman. In the Friedmanverse, this makes Tom Friedman the benevolent dictator around whom the thanks of his grateful devotees lavish their thanks and praise. However, in the real universe this makes him the single biggest narcissist who has ever lived.
But in this sentence, Friedman picks up a theme that has played out endlessly among Democratic political operatives, and almost every MSNBC host. That in order to qualify as a whistleblower, Snowden should have to come back to the United States, be arrested, if he is not rendered to another country to be tortured, kept in solitary confinement, put on trial eventually, and sentenced to life in prison. Or perhaps he should just be droned. Here is MSNBC weekend host Melissa Harris-Perry's over the top open letter to Edward Snowden making the same point.
The fact that this theme has been discounted by meta whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and civil rights hero extraordinaire John Lewis , doesn't seem to make this argument go away, even when those making the argument use Daniel Ellsberg and John Lewis to make their argument. But moreover, the argument engages in a logical fallacy -- that in order to be a true whistleblower, Snowden has to come back and serve a lengthy prison sentence to pay for his "crimes." This is the exact opposite of what a whistleblower should have to do. This is why we have whistleblower protections, to encourage people who are in Snowden's position who see crimes being committed by their employers to come forward and disclose these crimes without the fear of prosecution.
Next sentence.
"It would mean risking a lengthy jail term, but also trusting the fair-mindedness of the American people, who, I believe, will not allow an authentic whistle-blower to be unfairly punished."
This is where my head exploded. I mean seriously. I didn't know Friedman was a comedian. I don't know. Perhaps he's just trolling us. I mean, really?
There is no explanation for this sentence other than Friedman actually lives in a parallel universe where the sky is green and the grass is pink. Because if he lived in this universe, especially being as intelligent and aware of current issues as he's always reminding us that he is, he would know that we are currently conducting a trial of Private Bradley Manning, an Army enlisted soldier who leaked a huge amount of classified cables to the website Wiki Leaks who in turn subsequently published many of these diplomatic cables, and other documents including videos which exposed alleged war crimes being committed by American servicemen. Manning was kept naked in solitary confinement for months on end, was subjected to horrific treatment prior to his trial and still faces up to 90 years in prison for the crimes for which he has been convicted. He would know of Thomas Drake, another NSA employee who actually did go through "proper channels" in exposing the illegal warrantless wiretapping program that was being conducted, only to have every avenue shut down until he finally exposed the program to journalists only to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act, before the government's case literally fell apart during trial. He would know John Kiriakou, the only CIA employee to go to prison in connection to the torture program conducted by that agency, not because he conducted any torture himself, but because he confirmed the name of an agent who did conduct torture. He would know that the Obama administration has prosecuted four times the number of people under the Espionage Act that every administration before him combined.
But in the Friedmanverse, none of this matters. In this parallel universe known only to Tom Friedman and a few others, Americans would not sit back and allow a whistle-blower to be mistreated by their government. The fact is, that with pompous blowhards like Tom Friedman cheering them on, the American people have done this time, after time, after time, after time again.
The Friedmanverse is a scary place. Just catching a glimpse of it in this one paragraph of one column has been a horror show. I certainly wouldn't want to spend any time there myself. Unless, of course, I was Tom Friedman.
"Considering the breadth of reforms that President Obama is now proposing to prevent privacy abuses in intelligence gathering, in the wake of Snowden's disclosures, Snowden deserves a chance to make a second impression -- that he truly is a whistle-blower, not a traitor."
Whew! That first sentence is a whopper. I won't try to diagram it due to lack of space and out of respect to the English language, but I'm going to have to take the sentence apart just to analyse the myriad of untruths it contains.
First off, Friedman suggests that the reforms that Obama proposed are actually significant. I'm sure that there are many who share the Friedman Universe who would agree with him. For instance, fellow NYT columnist David Brooks would likely provide a sympathetic ear to this argument. However, outside of this Bizzarro Friedmanverse, or MSNBC, you would be hard pressed to find anyone who agrees that Obama's proposals are more than window dressing. For instance, perhaps Friedman could have read the editorial published immediately after the President's speech by his own newspaper which assailed the proposals as "tinkering around the edges of the nation's abusive surveillance programs."
This leads to another incredibly frustrating thing that I have noticed. It seems that for the rabid loyalist Obama followers (I didn't call them Obamabots) for the President to say something is the same as the President doing something. This, of course, to anyone who has been conscious for the last five years is the opposite of reality. In fact, it has gotten to the point where if President Obama says something, you can rest assured that he is going to do the complete opposite (perhaps this is why he is so admiring of Larry Summers, but I digress).
The very idea that the President has proposed reforms that will prevent privacy abuses in intelligence gathering ignores the fact that it was the President who ordered the abuses in the first place. It's not like this happened by accident. It's not that the President didn't know this was going on. His Justice Department developed this plan, the President included these proposals in the reauthorization of the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act. He is the one who came up with the damn program, and now you are lauding him for trying to prevent the abuses that he caused?
OK. Deep breath. Next phrase.
Friedman slips in the phrase "in the wake of Snowden's disclosures." So I guess somewhere in the ether of the Friedmanverse there is some acknowledgement that Snowden deserves some credit for bringing about these wide-ranging (look at their breadth) reforms being proposed. However, this is completely blown away by the fact that he then says he "deserves chance to make a second impression -- that he truly is a whistleblower, not a traitor."
I assume by all of this second impression theme that Snowden's first impession on Friedman was not a good one. Apparently his first impression on Friedman was that Snowden was a traitor. This, despite the fact that his disclosures have led to the wonderful reforms that will protect all of our privacy. Apparently in the Friedmanverse, informing Americans that their government is collecting data on every phone call you make, every e-mail you send, and everywhere you go on the internet, means that you are a traitor. But, Friedman's a good guy and he'll give you a second chance to show you live up to the dictates of the Friedmanverse.
Next sentence.
"The fact is, he dumped his data and fled to countries that are hostile to us and to the very principles he espoused."
I didn't think it was possible to outdo the first sentence. However Tom Friedman never ducks from a challenge and he met this one with gusto. Whereas the first sentence was merely intellectually, if not factually, dishonest, the second sentence simply wrings the neck of logic until logic is left lying on the floor, unconscious with its last death rattle slowly escaping its body.
Apparently in the Friedmanverse, a fact is a fact simply if Friedman states it is a fact. Glenn Greenwald took issue with this "fact" in a tweet this morning, stating:
"Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald
Tom Friedman says of Snowden: "The fact is, he dumped his data" - when did this "fact" happen?"
Greenwald's mistake is thinking that "facts" as we define them have anything to do with "facts" in the Friedmanverse. To Friedman, apparently carefully selecting documents that prove the mass surveillance of millions upon millions of Americans by their own government without probable cause or due process to two carefully selected reporters and doing so in such a way that these files were protected from being received by anyone other than those two carefully selected reporters is the definition of "dumping data."
Now, here is where logic really takes leave in the Friedmanverse. Friedman then says that Snowden fled to countries that are hostile to us and to the very principles he espoused. Let's think about that a second. Snowden as is well known fled to Hong Kong, which is in the People's Republic of China, and then to Russia where he was forced to remain by the fact that the U.S. revoked his passport and threatened every country which was offering Snowden safe haven (it is probable that Snowden was on his way to Ecuador when he stopped in Russia, but was unable to continue his journey due to the U.S. government's actions).
Friedman states that these countries are hostile to the U.S. and to the very principles he espoused. Let's think about that for a minute. There's no doubt that Russia and China are two of the world's "bad guys." They treat their people badly, their policies both domestically and internationally are in opposition to ours, and they support some of the world's worst groups. So, ok. Russia and China are bad. But, there is also no irony in the Friedmanverse. Because if there was, it would become clear rather quickly that saying that these countries, which allowed Snowden to remain free from the United States government and granted him political asylum were not actually acting in a way that was hostile to the principles Snowden espoused. The country that was seeking to arrest and imprison Snowden was actually the one that was acting against these principles.
Next sentence.
"To make a second impression, Snowden would need to come home, make his case and face his accusers."
OK. A quick aside. Does anyone else get tickled in the fact that Tom Friedman actually has thought about how Snowden's action personally affected him? I mean really. It seems that Snowden's worst crime in the Friedmanverse was that he made a bad first impression on Tom Friedman. In the Friedmanverse, this makes Tom Friedman the benevolent dictator around whom the thanks of his grateful devotees lavish their thanks and praise. However, in the real universe this makes him the single biggest narcissist who has ever lived.
But in this sentence, Friedman picks up a theme that has played out endlessly among Democratic political operatives, and almost every MSNBC host. That in order to qualify as a whistleblower, Snowden should have to come back to the United States, be arrested, if he is not rendered to another country to be tortured, kept in solitary confinement, put on trial eventually, and sentenced to life in prison. Or perhaps he should just be droned. Here is MSNBC weekend host Melissa Harris-Perry's over the top open letter to Edward Snowden making the same point.
The fact that this theme has been discounted by meta whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and civil rights hero extraordinaire John Lewis , doesn't seem to make this argument go away, even when those making the argument use Daniel Ellsberg and John Lewis to make their argument. But moreover, the argument engages in a logical fallacy -- that in order to be a true whistleblower, Snowden has to come back and serve a lengthy prison sentence to pay for his "crimes." This is the exact opposite of what a whistleblower should have to do. This is why we have whistleblower protections, to encourage people who are in Snowden's position who see crimes being committed by their employers to come forward and disclose these crimes without the fear of prosecution.
Next sentence.
"It would mean risking a lengthy jail term, but also trusting the fair-mindedness of the American people, who, I believe, will not allow an authentic whistle-blower to be unfairly punished."
This is where my head exploded. I mean seriously. I didn't know Friedman was a comedian. I don't know. Perhaps he's just trolling us. I mean, really?
There is no explanation for this sentence other than Friedman actually lives in a parallel universe where the sky is green and the grass is pink. Because if he lived in this universe, especially being as intelligent and aware of current issues as he's always reminding us that he is, he would know that we are currently conducting a trial of Private Bradley Manning, an Army enlisted soldier who leaked a huge amount of classified cables to the website Wiki Leaks who in turn subsequently published many of these diplomatic cables, and other documents including videos which exposed alleged war crimes being committed by American servicemen. Manning was kept naked in solitary confinement for months on end, was subjected to horrific treatment prior to his trial and still faces up to 90 years in prison for the crimes for which he has been convicted. He would know of Thomas Drake, another NSA employee who actually did go through "proper channels" in exposing the illegal warrantless wiretapping program that was being conducted, only to have every avenue shut down until he finally exposed the program to journalists only to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act, before the government's case literally fell apart during trial. He would know John Kiriakou, the only CIA employee to go to prison in connection to the torture program conducted by that agency, not because he conducted any torture himself, but because he confirmed the name of an agent who did conduct torture. He would know that the Obama administration has prosecuted four times the number of people under the Espionage Act that every administration before him combined.
But in the Friedmanverse, none of this matters. In this parallel universe known only to Tom Friedman and a few others, Americans would not sit back and allow a whistle-blower to be mistreated by their government. The fact is, that with pompous blowhards like Tom Friedman cheering them on, the American people have done this time, after time, after time, after time again.
The Friedmanverse is a scary place. Just catching a glimpse of it in this one paragraph of one column has been a horror show. I certainly wouldn't want to spend any time there myself. Unless, of course, I was Tom Friedman.
