The transformation of opinion on ‘the Left’ as regards the National Security State over the past 15 years has been striking, if slow to unfold. Back when Bush was King, the revelation of warrantless wiretaps – which was just the tip of the iceberg of the surveillance state – was greeted with outrage. Then, with Obama in office, most all those things that had been considered an outrageous infringement on the Constitutional order were tacitly accepted as the new normal. Now, under Trump, the Left has by and large become the cheering section for the Military-Industrial-Intelligence complex.
Meanwhile, folks like Glenn Greenwald and Chris Hedges, who used to be at the heart of that movement that questioned and dissented against the advent of the Imperial Presidency, have come to be widely reckoned as Russian agents.
I don’t have any inside information, but I have to say that this whole progression of events would be a masterful domestic psychological operation. To turn people who were totally against something into cheerleaders in such a short time would be quite an accomplishment. Unlike Hollywood, this fiction making industry doesn’t hand out awards… though I suppose the accomplishments are award enough.