On drugs, Glenn Greenwald, and serious jobs

Greenwald's sexual fetishes are his business; but his apparent use of dangerous drugs puts his journalism in question.

For days, a short video clip has roiled X, and journalism.

I haven’t watched the video, I have only seen stills from it, but it depicts Glenn Greenwald, perhaps the best-known independent journalist in the world, wearing a French maid’s outfit and licking a man’s feet.

I don’t care. Greenwald is openly gay. Even if he weren’t, where he puts his tongue is up to him. (Assuming the recipient is consenting and of legal age.)¹

What I do care about is the meth pipe lurking in the back of the video.

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(Unique takes. For better or worse. And for less than 20 cents a day.)

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Greenwald is a confounding figure for our confounding times.

He became famous as leftist journalist who helped Edward Snowden expose the National Security Agency’s warrantless spying on Americans. Then he turned into a conservative hero for his attacks on the media’s absurd claims in 2016 that Russia had used a few dozen Twitter trolls to install Donald Trump in power.

Like me and Matt Taibbi, as the last decade ended and Covid began, he became very concerned about media groupthink and the left’s efforts to use Big Tech companies to silence free speech. When Amazon initially refused to publish my first Unreported Truths pamphlet on June 4, 2020, Greenwald was one of a tiny handful of journalists who spoke out on my behalf. (As you may know, Amazon reversed course after Elon Musk called out Jeff Bezos on Twitter.)

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(Those were the days.)

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Thus Greenwald and I are fellow travelers, of a sort — though there are plenty of issues on which we disagree.² I don’t know him personally, but his work publishing Snowden’s leaks carried real personal risk and had worldwide impact.

So I wish I could wholeheartedly support him over this tape, which is an invasion of his privacy and an effort to humble and humiliate him.

I cannot.

Some on the right, particularly the Christian right, have attacked Greenwald for his fetishes. In a post now viewed 2.2 million times on X, Jason Whitlock, the former ESPN columnist, wrote:

Serious, thoughtful replies only: Can you separate Glenn Greenwald's courageous journalism from his immoral, degenerate personal life? Is there scripture to guide us here? Please share. Thanks.

Whitlock was hardly alone in condemning Greenwald. Matt Walsh and others had similar takes, many related to Greenwald’s homosexuality.

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I think the right is wrong to attack Greenwald over his personal sexual choices.

His apparent drug use is another story. (To be clear, Greenwald did not confirm using methamphetamine after the clip appeared and commentators pointed out the pipe. But he also did not deny it. In an oddly worded post later he did deny being an addict.)

My views on issues of personal choice and government regulation may seem somewhat confounding. Libertarian Unreported Truths readers often criticize me for standing against mRNA vaccine mandates while believing the government can should try to reduce drug use.

I’ll try to explain my views. Maybe I’ll convince you, or maybe I’ll just convince you that I’m as hypocritical as everyone else.

In general, I oppose government intrusion into personal medical decisions.

I am pro-choice, though I find abortion personally abhorrent. I am pro-vaccine choice (completely for adults; the situation is a bit more complicated for kids, though I am coming around to the view that governments should not interfere with parental rights).

Those are medical decisions, and they are governed by a principle of near-absolute autonomy. It is not easy in this country to force even profoundly mentally ill people to take psychiatric drugs, and it shouldn’t be. In matters of sickness and health, personal choice reigns absolute.

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(I was going to put up a still from the video, but I decided to go with another subscribe button instead. Better for everyone!)

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When it comes to vices — activities in the pursuit of personal pleasure — I believe society has a greater theoretical right to intervene. Here I try neither for a doctrinaire libertarianism nor moralism, but instead rationalism, always keeping in mind the dangers and externalities of the activity.

I personally gamble, and I have no theoretical objection to gambling. I think adults should watch as much pornography as they see fit, though I am aware some research has linked pornography with unhealthy sexual outcomes.

And I do not think the government should try to regulate private sexual choices between consenting adults, including homosexuality and adultery. These are matters for church, not state. If God objects to Glenn Greenwald’s sex life, He will have plenty of time to say so.

At the same time, I believe our increasing permissiveness toward drugs and outright promotion of gambling have had hugely negative societal effects — for users, for society, and most important for the people closest to users.

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(Spoiler alert, he dies at the end.)

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The slide into addiction is simply too easy for gambling and drugs. Even a user who stops short of frank, life-destroying addiction or overdose can still do himself and the people around him serious or even fatal harm. Gambling and all drugs of abuse carry these risks, though not all drugs have the same risk; methamphetamine is near the top.

So governments and societies have an obligation to try to limit the use of drugs (including alcohol) and gambling to the extent possible, rather than promoting and glamorizing them or seeing them primarily as revenue sources.³

But the duty to discourage use doesn’t just fall on society, but individuals. And people in positions of responsibility have a particular obligation to avoid using these drugs, both to set an example and because of the potential consequences of their failures.

I wouldn’t want my pilot or surgeon using methamphetamine, and a journalist with an audience as large as Glenn Greenwald can do at least as much good, or harm, as any pilot or surgeon.

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The argument in two tweets:

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And so, not for the first time, I find myself in an awkward spot. I don’t want to call Greenwald out, I don’t want to be in bed — so to speak — with Jason Whitlock.

Yet I can’t look past that pipe.

Maybe Glenn Greenwald is rich enough, and lucky enough, to be able to use drugs without consequence (again, to be clear, he did not confirm doing so). But we can’t know who will fall into the trap of addiction or overdose, who will have a car accident or abuse a child or family member. What we can know is that by failing to discourage drug use we make all those harms more likely. The risks are too great, and when use goes wrong, it’s the rest of us who have to pick up the pieces.

So the rest of us have a say, whether the user likes it or not. And any adult who fails to understand this reality has shown a profound lack of judgment — one that calls into question every other judgment he makes.

1. And putting prostitution aside. I think prostitution and how societies should handle it are the most complicated of all the vice/libertarian/moral issues we face. Trying to separate sex, consent, money, and power in relationships is nearly impossible and not the state’s business. Yet legalizing prostitution clearly allows young and poor women (and men) to be exploited even more openly than they already are by sex traffickers, as Europe’s experience has shown. In any case, there is no evidence that the man whose feet Greenwald was licking** was anything other than a willing participant.

** A phrase I never expected I would have to write.

2. He follows the Trumpian line on Ukraine and Putin, for example (I know lots of you do as well). At the same time, he has not lived in the United States for two decades, which is a move I cannot fathom.

3. This is true whether the drugs are prescribed, sold legally without a prescription, or illicit; my view on the absolute autonomy of medical decision-making does not apply to drugs that are addictive and euphoric. Here again you are welcome to call me a hypocrite if you like.