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I've view Snowden has a hero in a time where it is very hard to stand up and cast a light on national wrongdoing. I often struggle when I return to the US Midwe

• Sven7 11y ago
  Don't worry about it. We have always taken time to recognize our heroes. History is littered with people who were called traitors who now have roads and schools named after them. But I do wonder if our politicians were to trying to pull off another Iraq Invasion type event, whether it would be as easy today as they made it appear in 2003. Would it be easier for a whistleblower to disrupt it today? It doesn't feel so.
• lisper 11y ago
  > I wonder why they can't see the obvious wrongdoing by our leadership and how it erodes our values. It's because traditional Christian values have been hijacked by business leaders who believe it is in their best interests to cultivate a populace with unquestioning deference to authority. (They're probably right about that too.)
  • tptacek 11y ago
    This is an uncharacteristically dumb comment from you.
    • lisper 11y ago
      Well, thanks for the backhanded compliment. But why do you think it's dumb? It seems self-evidently true to me.
      • tptacek 11y ago
        That what this thread needs is a bunch of culture war bullshit about traditional Christian values?
        • lisper 11y ago
          If the shoe fits...
          • tptacek 11y ago
            Really? "Wake up sheeple" is all you have?
            • lisper 11y ago
              Um, no. Let's review: the comment to which I was responding was by someone who considers Snowden a hero and couldn't understand why his midwestern family considered him a traitor. The OP specifically couched his confusion in terms of Christian values, and even cited a Bible passage. I responded with an answer to the question that he posed in the terms in which he posed it, and which made a factual claim that I believe to be correct, and which I can support with evidence. That's what I meant by "if the shoe fits..." (Just in case you're not aware: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/if_the_shoe_fits https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/if_the_shoe_fits)
              • tptacek 11y ago
                You know what? You're totally right, and I'm wrong. I apologize. I still want to push back on the idea that people raised in conservative Christian families are necessarily authoritarian, but I'd have better luck doing that in a conversation I hadn't already poisoned by jumping the gun.
  • larrys 11y ago
    "who believe it is in their best interests to cultivate a populace with unquestioning deference to authority" The populace doesn't ask questions. They simply parrot what a few outspoken people with a mouthpiece tell them to do or think. Most people are lemmings they don't have your brain (I looked at your resume). Not that every conclusion that you would come to would be correct. But in the everyday world (away from NYC, SV and HN) the mediocrity and low level thinking of everyday people is stunning. A large amount of lawn signs is enough to get you elected to local office.
    • explorigin 11y ago
      > But in the everyday world (away from NYC, SV and HN) the mediocrity and low level thinking of everyday people is stunning. Please don't think that 3 communities contain the monopoly on critical thinking. From my observation (living in the "Bible belt"), it comes from a person's news media sources. Television and newspapers (traditional news media) parrot party lines and support the two-party duopoly. People that have always gotten their news this way understandably are easily controlled. There is a newer generation (not just young people) that use the internet as an augment or even primary source of news[1]. This gives a completely different perspective on world events. These sorts of people are all over the world. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOeAa6Ye4dc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOeAa6Ye4dc
  • drumdance 11y ago
    who believe it is in their best interests to cultivate a populace with unquestioning deference to authority Facts not in evidence. You really think you can know what they believe in their hearts?
  • laotzu 11y ago
    >Avoiding the risk of transgression has become more important to us than carrying a difficult position for God. And it is this that is killing us. "The more dangerous a thing, the more is its conquest ordained by life": it is from that conviction that the modern world has emerged; and from that our religion, too, must be reborn. -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
  • marcusgarvey 11y ago
    Quite right. One example is the whole "support the troops" fetishism you find in the midwest and the south. If you really supported them you would not want to send them off to dangerous places for spurious reasons.
• nordsieck 11y ago
  > erodes our values There's your problem right there. Your implication is that the people you talk to are blind to their own values. In reality, they simply value different things than you.
  • tsunamifury 11y ago
    The story of David is meant to illustrate that we actually share the same values, but for some reason have chosen to demonize people we would otherwise lionize in retrospect.
    • riskable 11y ago
      That right there is your bad assumption: That self-declared Christians have anything remotely resembling "shared values". Take two random self-described Christians and have them write down, "what would define a 'true Christian'" and you'll get two completely different sets of answers. All religious beliefs are personal. Every member of every religion will pick & choose which tenets, sacred verses, etc that they want to believe and only believe in those things. No one agrees 100% on every little detail and only "extremists" follow their religions to the letter.
      • explorigin 11y ago
        > All religious beliefs are personal. Every member of every religion will pick & choose which tenets, sacred verses, etc that they want to believe and only believe in those things. No one agrees 100% on every little detail and only "extremists" follow their religions to the letter. You're using a lot of absolutes in your statement. It's as if you have some secret knowledge about the way all religious people think. Care to expand on your reasoning?
        • riskable 11y ago
          I'm a Sith.
      • fabulist 11y ago
• tptacek 11y ago
  Because two wrongs don't make a right? Some of what Snowden did seems straightforwardly heroic, and some of it... much less so, to me at least. Not everyone thinks exactly the same way you do. Believe it or not, outside message boards like this, there are a lot of people that don't care about NSA surveillance of US Internet traffic at all, and care a lot more about Islamic terrorism (to be clear: I am not one of those people).
  • lisper 11y ago
    > some of it... much less so Like what?
    • tptacek 11y ago
      Delegating to journalists he hardly knew a cache of documents so large that he could not possibly have read them, cheerleading the disclosure of intelligence secrets that had nothing directly to do with the surveillance of Americans.
      • lisper 11y ago
        Delegating that job to journalists has always seemed to me like a responsible decision on his part. What would you have had him do instead? If the journalists released "intelligence secrets that had nothing directly to do with the surveillance of Americans" (it's not clear to me that they did, but I'm willing to suspend disbelief here) isn't that on them, not Snowden?
        • davidw 11y ago
          They obviously wouldn't have the stuff to release in the first place if it weren't for him.
          • Nadya 11y ago
            I never understand this reasoning. That all the burden should be placed on Snowden to pour over the documents and determine what is breaking the law and what isn't. He was fairly certain a majority of it was - at that point it's most responsible of him to hand it off to people who are in a better decision to make those calls. 1) Do you expect a single person to go through 1000's of documents with their rudimentary understandings and interpretations of the law? Would you and why would you trust him if so? 2) Should he have a lawyer go through the documents with him? 3) Should he get second opinions on whether or not something is breaking the law? 4) Should he trust a team of respected journalists and their team of lawyers to go through the documents on his behalf? The journalists he released the documents to have trust that they've established for years. That makes them hard to dismiss as looney bins. Snowden does not have that trust and would have been easy to dismiss by himself.
• evook 11y ago
  > I wonder why they can't see the obvious wrongdoing by our leadership and how it erodes our values. I can't keep up self-satisfaction when I've to admit that I am lacking deeper understanding of my environment. The simplest solution to that problem would be that I tell myself with as much other people as possible that understanding my environment isn't that important, because we've managed life until here without it. We declare ourself as normal and defame everyone not belonging to our social bubble. Maybe we even declare the minority of people that get whats going on as an undesirable to be in group. But you've to remember that those processes are normal and healthy. People getting sucked up in reality tend to depression.
• lucozade 11y ago
  IANAP but could it be that you and your kin have a different view as to what the leadership of a nation is for? For example, they could see the primary role as protecting the safety and prosperity of the citizenry of the USA. You, maybe, see it as protecting the values of the USA as, for example, enshrined in the constitution? I think there is an argument that Snowden's actions could have put at risk the former for the sake of the latter. I don't believe that he did but I could understand if someone believed that he took an unnecessary risk. I think there is also an argument that says that to give up ones values if to forsake the need for protection as what's left isn't worth protecting.
  • Floegipoky 11y ago
    >> I think there is an argument that Snowden's actions could have put at risk the former for the sake of the latter This is actually addressed in the article: "CIA, NSA and DIA (Defence Intelligence Agency) Directors all have been brought on the floor of the congress and they have been asked by my strongest critics, begged for any evidence, that any national security interest has been harmed, that any individual has come to harm. And not in any single case have they shown concrete evidence that this occurred."
    • caskance 11y ago
      Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Perhaps it is simply that they, unlike Snowden, don't blase-ly reveal classified information.
      • vkou 11y ago
        Perhaps the Snowden leaks prevented Sauron from reclaiming the One Ring. There's no evidence for that theory, either. So, all we have to go on is "Trust us! And don't verify!" - from people who lie through their teeth at congressional hearings.
        • caskance 11y ago
          Indeed. An unfortunate dilemma of espionage.
• hackuser 11y ago
  > when I return to the US Midwest ... Since its the Bible belt For those unfamiliar: The Bible Belt isn't in the US Midwest and generally the regions aren't much alike. The Bible Belt is the most conservative region in the US and is in the American South. The Midwest has historically been liberal, even progressive in places, the home of unions and democratic voters. (Also the Midwest isn't in the middle west, but you can find a map.) That's not to say that there are no Midwestern areas where people are more religious or conservative, or that tsunamifury's family doesn't live in one.
  • andreyf 11y ago
    The more interesting point, stands, however: Snowden's actions are not a Christian vs non-Christian issue. Their effects on the NSA and the international cybersecurity community have been enormous, and whether their totality served the public good is an incredibly interesting debate without a clear answer.
  • subliminalbrad 11y ago
    Speaking as someone in a solidly midwestern state (though the definition is murky[0]) I don't think it's fair to say the midwest is historically liberal. There are a few liberal cities but there are also states like Missouri and Kansas. It's a mix of both. [0]: https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/what-states-are-in-the-midwest/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/what-states-are-in-the-m...
• fineman 11y ago
  For me the angle is accountability. Whatever your family wants, and it'll be different than you individually, they all want the elected and appointed officials of the government to carry it out honestly and without corruption. Proper separation of the bodies of government is important for everyone, conservative and liberal alike. The domestic spying not just on average citizens, but also specifically on (potential) political opponents (like then-senator Obama, for example) weakens all of us. It sounds efficient to some, to imagine one monolithic law-enforcement entity without its hands tied so the idea of parallel construction, for instance, doesn't bother them. But it's not a "rights of the guilty" leftist tree-hugging issue, it's a corruption prevention issue. By separating our agencies and making them work through official channels we have a check on any one getting out of control. Be you Right or Left, the government are our employees and Snowden is the one who came to tell us the rest had their hands in the cash register. (And worse, were forging our name with the bank, etc...)