The Price of Truth, with Glenn Greenwald

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The truth can be an elusive thing.

From early on, we learn that it’s easier to get things wrong than to get them right. When we understand something, we tend to generalize it too broadly, and get confronted with its limitations. The notorious fallibility of our intellect is with us at every turn: logical fallacies, cognitive biases, endless forms of hubris – we don’t like to admit it, but our effort to capture truth is mostly a graveyard of our failures.

Hence the value of science: its gruelling process of experimentation and disputation is one of our most reliable sources of truth.  A no-holds-barred democratic system powered by free speech is meant to provide something similar in the political arena.

But the influence of power lurks at every turn. 

By its very nature, power is held by a few, and exercised on the many.  When a truth is inconvenient to them, they’re incentivized to use their considerable means to suppress it.

The culture of secrecy in even the most democratic of governments attests to this, as does endless meddling by large corporations. We may have the Internet and some measure of critical thinking – but the deluge of information we have to sift daily is often weaponized or tinged with all sorts of bias.

Hunter S. Thompson’s theory - that “truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours” – may be a bit dramatic. But it does contain more than a kernel of truth. 

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My guest in this episode of the podcast – famed investigative reporter Glenn Greenwald – left a lucrative career in law to mercilessly expose the powerful.

After famously breaking the Snowden NSA story, Greenwald’s work earned him enemies on both sides of the political aisle: critiquing the Bush administration for its attack on civil liberties during “war on terror”, but equally eviscerating Democrats for Russiagate and their meddling with social media platforms to silence opponents. He spares no targets for political preference.

Taking on special interests and speaking this much truth to power does have a price. Shadowy investigations, bizarre lawsuits, and cancellation campaigns – he’s faced them all, and more than once had to rely on his lawyer’s toolbox to emerge unscathed.

Like other precious things, the measure of truth is what people are willing to pay for it. And Glenn has paid more than his fair share.

His breakdown of our current political and cultural climate is nuanced and illuminating – and speaks of a career spent watching the powerful from the lens of our highest ideals.

You can start by checking out this short clip, where Greenwald explains why the mark of a free society is how it treats its dissidents.