{"id":186753,"date":"2013-10-22T21:06:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-23T02:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/10\/22\/signs-of-the-apocalypse-richard-cohen-edition\/"},"modified":"2013-10-22T21:06:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-23T02:06:00","slug":"signs-of-the-apocalypse-richard-cohen-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/10\/22\/signs-of-the-apocalypse-richard-cohen-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Signs of the Apocalypse, Richard Cohen Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been rather hard on him<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’ve called him a sociopath, a racist, an idiot, and a bad writer.<\/p>\n

I stand by these assessments, but in the same way that a stopped clock is right twice a day, he can’t get everything<\/b> wrong every<\/b> time.<\/p>\n

On the matter of Edward Snowden, he has admitted that he was wrong, and that Snowden is a whistle-blower, not a traitor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What are we to make of Edward Snowden? I know what I once made of him. He was no real whistleblower, I wrote, but \u201cridiculously cinematic\u201d and \u201cnarcissistic\u201d as well. As time has proved, my judgments were just plain wrong. Whatever Snowden is, he is curiously modest and has bent over backward to ensure that the information he has divulged has done as little damage as possible. As a \u201ctraitor,\u201d he lacks the requisite intent and menace.<\/span>

<\/span> But traitor is what Snowden has been roundly called. Harry Reid: \u201cI think Snowden is a traitor.\u201d John Boehner: \u201cHe\u2019s a traitor.\u201d Rep. Peter King: \u201cThis guy is a traitor; he\u2019s a defector.\u201d And Dick Cheney not only denounced Snowden as a \u201ctraitor\u201d but also suggested that he might have shared information with the Chinese. This innuendo, as with Saddam Hussein\u2019s weapons of mass destruction, is more proof of Cheney\u2019s unerring determination to be cosmically wrong.<\/span>

<\/span> The early denunciations of Snowden now seem both over the top and beside the point. If he is a traitor, then which side did he betray and to whom does he now owe allegiance? Benedict Arnold, America\u2019s most famous traitor, sold out to the British during the Revolutionary War and wound up a general in King George III\u2019s army. Snowden seems to have sold out to no one. In fact, a knowledgeable source says that Snowden has not even sold his life story and has rebuffed offers of cash for interviews. Maybe his most un-American act is passing up a chance at easy money. Someone ought to look into this.<\/span>

<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span> Snowden is one of those people for whom the conjunction \u201cand\u201d is apt. Normally, I prefer the more emphatic \u201cbut\u201d so I could say \u201cSnowden did some good but he did a greater amount of damage.\u201d Trouble is, I\u2019m not sure of that. I am sure, though, that he has instigated a worthwhile debate. I am sure that police powers granted the government will be abused over time and that Snowden is an authentic whistleblower, appalled at what he saw on his computer screen and wishing, like Longfellow\u2019s Paul Revere, to tell \u201cevery Middlesex village and farm\u201d what our intelligence agencies were doing. Who do they think they are, Google?<\/span>

<\/span> But (and?) I am at a loss to say what should be done with Snowden. He broke the law, this is true. He has been chary with his information, but he cannot know all its ramifications and, anyway, the government can\u2019t allow anyone to decide for himself what should be revealed. That, too, is true. So Snowden is, to my mind, a bit like John Brown, the zealot who intensely felt the inhumanity of slavery and broke the law in an attempt to end the practice. My analogy is not neat \u2014 Brown killed some people \u2014 but you get the point. I suppose Snowden needs to be punished but not as a traitor. He may have been technically disloyal to America but not, after some reflection, to American values. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Stopped clock, I guess.<\/p>\n

I’ll need to wait for a 2nd<\/sup> non wanktastic article before I claim that we are seeing an actual learning curve here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been rather hard on him. I’ve called him a sociopath, a racist, an idiot, and a bad writer. I stand by these assessments, but in the same way that a stopped clock is right twice a day, he can’t get everything wrong every time. On the matter of Edward Snowden, he has admitted that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1102,1064,978,1103,1164],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intelligence","category-media","category-politics","category-secrecy","category-teotwawki"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186753"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}