Not That TNR Is Much Better Than Obama

I quoted Noam Schreiber in that last piece, but that doesn't change the fact that TNR is still a website that publishes people like Todd Gitlin who calls people on the internet "a wild street mob":

or indeed, where there is a state, there is diplomacy. Where there is diplomacy, some of it must take place out of the spotlight. The diplomats may well be better judges of which part that should be than the bureaucratic squads who stamp classifications on government documents. Surely, overall, the diplomats are better judges than the wild street mobs of the Internet.

This points to what's at the heart of the Wikileaks phenomenon: the complete inability of people like Gitlin to understand that elite opinion is the problem right now, not the solution. That's what the Tea Partiers are tapping into right now, though the Republicans and their think-tank allies are working hard to rechannel the sentiment in ridiculous, counterproductive directions.
Why the hell should Americans trust that diplomats are good judges of what should remain secret? Why the hell should ANYBODY? Sure, they're experts, but they're also an interested party, and the last two years are littered with stories about how interested experts got things wrong over, and over, and over again. Matt Taibbi has practically built his reputation on it, and the things he ferrets out are worse every day. What's the difference between a secret communique and, say, a rocket docket? Both are kept secret.  Both are the province of experts. And both raise one hell of a lot of questions about these experts' and elites' judgement and objectivity when brought to light.

The reason why Wikileaks is being castigated is the same reason why Taibbi got kicked out of one of those secret courts: because they expose just how jury-rigged and questionable these peoples' solutions are.