This will be a short diary.
The baseless insult "Anti-american" has been used against critics of the United States all throughout history, mainly to silence said critics in a debate. The smear was used against our fellow progressives all throughout the beginning of the Bush Administration because we had the tenacity to call his wars for oil bullshit, we DARED not support the real Axis of Evil from carrying out their plans to topple governments for revenge, fun and profit. We saw through the lies and called them out, and had our honor and patriotism questioned for it.
Given this history, I wince whenever I read or hear the word "anti-american". It makes my heart sink, makes me feel a pit in my stomach. It brings me straight back to the bad old days of the Bush Administration where progressives and liberals were being hounded and vilified for not being as stupid and ready for revenge as the rest of the populace after 9/11.
Seeing it here right at dkos, after all of the harm that word did to our movement, makes me angry. It makes me angry not only because it used as a device to silence critics, to make people shut up, to shut down further conversation because what is being said has been deemed "traitorous" by the American hive-mind, but also because it questions our deeply held love for this country.
Comments like this -- link (the link to the full diary, for context, can be found here) -- are absolutely ridiculous. They are attacks, smears, meant to shut down discussion and stifle debate, all because someone is proposing an idea that another doesn't like.
For clarification, I don't read Glen Greenwald, and I don't have an opinion outside of him outside of the Snowden affair. Honestly, I think he did the country a service with the whole episode, but I don't really like GG's writing so I don't read. But attacking anyone on the grounds that they hate this country because of their ideas is absolutely disgusting and vile to me. And yes, I read the comment, the commenter claimed it was no insult -- but it brought me right back to the days of ideas being outlawed simply because they were contrary to popularly held, backwards, often times wrong, opinions.
Someone should be judged by their love for this country not on their ideas, their arguments, their political affiliation, their ideology, their beliefs, but by their deeds. I don't know if GG is "Anti-american" by deed, but he is certainly not anti-american for doing his job as a journalist and an observer of American politics and telling the truth as he sees it. No matter how you feel about his opinions.
Given the disgusting and jingoistic history of the term "Anti-american", especially in its recent use against progressive and liberal viewpoints, it disgusts me to see it here. Its vile.