3 ms·

> Young: Snowden says he gave them to the public; no, he didn’t. He gave them to a bunch of self-interested journalists who decided to run a certain story with

> Young: Snowden says he gave them to the public; no, he didn’t. He gave them to a bunch of self-interested journalists who decided to run a certain story with it, i.e., to explain it to people. And their fucking explainers really have a problem. > Natsios: It’s a serious conflict of interest. They’ve written themselves into the story as heroes, co-heroes of the story. It’s a conflict of interest. They’re not at a distance from their source. They’ve embedded themselves in the narrative, and therefore all decisions are highly suspect because they benefit from the outcome of the narrative in every sense. As far as I'm concerned, "We the People" need heroes. The fact is that the vast majority of the public grows up looking up to them, whether via History class or movies. But The Left keeps tearing its own heroes up (usually for righteous reasons- they're dangerous etc), while The Right is much more likely to prop theirs up. So, without going into the rest of the piece, I do kinda like styling people like Snowden and Manning as heroes. I'm okay with some self-promotion and so on.

existencebox 11y ago
To myself, and I imagine many others with the same views of self sacrifice and patriotic comittment, there was no need for the reporters to make Snowden out to be a hero. Simply the act of putting oneself in such a dangerous situation, risking ones entire life and livelihood and ability to be with the ones they love to try and make their nation a better place, is one key part of what it means to be heroic (As long as the actions themselves do not cross certain lines.) And as per my initial paragraph, this is speaking as someone who sees this disclosure as very fair, those lines were not crossed, he truly is a hero on his own merit to a level of which we have had very few since the founding of this country.

existencebox 11y ago

To myself, and I imagine many others with the same views of self sacrifice and patriotic comittment, there was no need for the reporters to make Snowden out to be a hero. Simply the act of putting oneself in such a dangerous situation, risking ones entire life and livelihood and ability to be with the ones they love to try and make their nation a better place, is one key part of what it means to be heroic (As long as the actions themselves do not cross certain lines.) And as per my initial paragraph, this is speaking as someone who sees this disclosure as very fair, those lines were not crossed, he truly is a hero on his own merit to a level of which we have had very few since the founding of this country.