Your goal.
I’m far too creative to settle for something like that. 
1 Like
Hey, it’s not my country, but it is your choice. Better make the pragmatic and realistic one.
Of course.
1 Like
Back to you and anybody else; please explain how president Obama wold
have been a great man if everything people wanted him to do should
have been a Executive Order, yet when he can’t carry these things out
(or he’s blocked from carrying them out by members of his own party
and by the GOP), he’s now a ‘do-nothing’ pariah?
What do my views on whether or not Obama has lived up to expectations/done absolutely everything I wanted him to do have to do with whether or not it’s valuable to the American people and American democracy to disclose evidence of government overreach and privacy violations?
Personally, I’m actually pretty pragmatic on Obama and always have been. I’ve been disappointed with some of the stuff he’s done. Pretty happy with other stuff. Realize that there’s stuff his hands are tied on politically and I realize that there’s stuff we COMPLETELY disagree on and some of that stuff bothers me a lot. I don’t think he’s evil and I don’t think he’s the Messiah. I think he’s an imperfect politician working in the constraints a really imperfect system.
But none of that is particularly relevant to what I think about the Snowden leaks – or, at least, it’s irrelevant in the terms that you’re framing it in. Again, I feel like you’re setting up a scenario where I have Choice A) Love everything Obama does, hate everything conservatives do, and thus must hate Snowden or B) Hate everything Obama does, love what conservatives do, and thus must love Snowden. And those are very, very, very far from being my only choices.
Is Snowden doing this because he cares about America, or just because
he’s bored/disgruntled?
I don’t really give a shit. I care about the content of the leaks and, from where I sit, disclosing this information is good for us and important.
Is Snowden really a ‘progressive’ or just a false-flag right-winger
out to make things worse for progressive Americans?
Again, Snowden’s politics don’t particularly matter to me. And if by “making things worse for progessives” you mean “making a government that’s currently lead by a Democrat look bad”, well I don’t particularly give a shit about that, either. Frankly, I think it makes progressives look better if we can criticize politicians who on “our side”, rather than creating an us vs. them dichotomy. Just because Obama and I agree that GLBT people should have full civil rights and that a social safety net is a good thing doesn’t mean that I have to agree with him on everything and it definitely doesn’t mean that it’s detrimental to me to have some serious critique happen when he supports stuff that’s fucked up.
Is Snowden concerned about his nation’s security, or looking to
corrupt it for kicks?
It doesn’t really matter what Snowden wants to do at this point. It matters what we do with the information.
Does Snowden like and respect government and believes that it can help
people, or is he the kind of extremist (right or left) that believes
government should be destroyed, but without providing an alternative?
And again, Snowden’s power was in disclosure. What we do with the information is up to us. Not him.
7 Likes
Spoilers! Hmmph. The nerve of some people.
Okay, even if that’s exactly true, all i can say is… And?
1 Like
His motives should be examined? Why? Who cares? It’s not about Snowden, aside from the entertainment value his escapades have provided.
Seriously, it doesn’t matter. You could discredit or canonize Snowden, the documents he releases and what they document will remain unaffected, and will still have happened.
3 Likes
You seem fixated on a narrative where this story has only two sides, but you also seem to cast others as having oversimplified views?
Crapmongers, how do they work?
3 Likes
“The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts - they alter the facts to fit their views.”
3 Likes
Memed.
4 Likes
This was already happening before he was elected - sadly very few people who strongly supported Obama drew the correct conclusion from his behavior on the telco immunity issue. They had to have their noses rubbed in it. But at least most of them understand now; better late than never.
Good thing you’re assured us you’re not emotionally involved at all. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to tell.
3 Likes
Yeah, I was able to see where he was going before he got elected. Wasn’t just the telco thing. His saber rattling on Pakistan was rather telling.
Not to lesser-of-two-or-more-evils but there weren’t really any great alternatives in that election. And in the 2012, a vote for my candidate of choice would literally not have counted in my state. My state being evil and all.
1 Like
Yeah, I could indulge in the luxury of voting Green, because there was no way Delaware was going to go for anyone but Biden’s running mate. No real moral quandary when the outcome was predetermined.
2 Likes
For what it’s worth, I agree with that. His initial disclosure didn’t merit the amount of attention he’s gotten. It’s nothing that anyone who’s at all aware of the NSA couldn’t have guessed; obvious in retrospect.
Guessing is very different than having evidence. I’d suspected the NSA of the things revealed in the first release, but they had publicly denied that they were doing what they were shown to do and we had no proof. The fact that we had details of their actual implementation and proof merited as much attention as it got.
1 Like
We agree that we disagree on the value of the info.
And I agree that people like you can’t see the forest for the trees.
MY thesis? That’s the opinion of the man who wrote this article, and I’ve come to believe of late that he’s right on a lot of things concerning the emoprogressive left.
This topic was automatically closed after 1278 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
