The Snowden interview

Brian Williams' Ed Snowden interview last night seemed--and I grant the possibility of some naivete here--an encounter with narcissism, but not treason.

Snowden, like his briefly interviewed compatriot in True Belief, Glenn Greenwald, came across as a temperament almost wholly invulnerable to the notion that his actions might have been flawed or mistaken. There is right, in Snowden's opinion, and there is wrong, and he squarely placed himself among the forces of undisputed righteousness--which in itself is, at best, a manifestation of self-inflation, at worst a disturbing sign of borderline personality disorder. I trust and respect skepticism; and though there comes a time when one must take a stand on the paramount issues of one's day, doing so without the self-awareness of fallibility is a journey into delusion.

But was Snowden's righteousness--or self-righteousness--treason? That seems a stretch. Traitors are motivated by either material gain or malevolence toward their country. Snowden demonstrated neither. In fact he believably professed a deep love of his country and implicitly aligned himself (again with the self-inflation) with its Frederick Douglasses and Martin Luther Kings. He even suggested he'd be willing to trade a spell in the slammer for a return ticket home. These were not the sentiments of a Benedict Arnold.

Snowden's hole card, though, was his lamentation that the American security apparatus' whistleblower "protections" suck. As he told Brian Williams, he tried to do what he believed was right in the right way, but the way in place proved utterly inconsequential. And that's a fault not in Snowden's stars, but in the rabidly self-protective, we're-as-righteous-as-Snowden-is bureaucracy of America's surveillance state.

 

Comments

[japa21]

The none problem with that argument is that you are accepting what Snowden says at face value. Is he being honest? I don't know.

I do know that prior to Obama being elected, he was quite open about criticizing people who did far less than he did. Did he have an honest change of heart or were his actions motivated by animosity towards the current administration (even though most of what he disclosed were actions by the prior administration)?

It would have been nice if Williams had asked him about this change in the way Snowden looks at things.

Is he a traitor? Again, I don;t know, but I think he was being extremely narcissistic to compare himself through implication with the others you mentioned.

And I get tired of him being described as a whistleblower. His actions do not fall under the category of whistleblowing.

The people that brought out the problems at the VA are true whistleblowers.

[Peter G]

And yet of all the many classified documents Snowden took with him on the lam he forgot to bring a single shred of evidence of any of the communications he purportedly sent to the NSA documenting his concerns. There appears to be exactly one of these e-mails which posed a question that was answered to Snowden's satisfaction. But I share your belief. Snowden is no more a traitor than Manning who likewise released thousands of documents he had not read to people he did not know. Something he had also sworn under oath not to do. This is merely large scale ego driven vandalism. I find the idea that Snowden's grand revelations, which so far have consisted almost entirely of power point briefing documents, to be somewhat less than startling. Which is not to say he doesn't deserve a good long stretch in the hoosegow.