“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas


Monday, January 02, 2017

Ed's movie review and bonus editorial


So we just finished watching "Snowden". I thought the story as I understood it was laid out well and Joseph Gordon-Levitt did a terrific job as Snowden. Importantly, they made the point in the movie that Snowden went out of his way, to the extent that he could, to make sure no US assets were endangered by his actions.
Now, I realize that a lot of my friends here despise Ed Snowden as a traitor, and predictably an Oliver Stone film will always take the side opposite the US government, as this one pretty much did but, objectively if your government is authorizing itself in secret to do things it probably shouldn't, clearly outside of its purvue of fighting terrorism, is it really treason to reveal that?
The argument for domestic surveillance and data collection is always, "Well, if you're not doing anything wrong, then what are you worried about?"
Look, I operate an inconsequential, two-bit blog that is highly critical of the government. What happens when criticizing our government becomes, not illegal, but just "anti-American"? Can the NSA trawl back 10 years for every negative statement I made in order to intimidate me into silence, the same way the Clintons used targeted IRS audits to intimidate their critics into silence?
I don't know if Snowden is a traitor or not, I'm just saying the unaccountable bureaucrats in government don't have a good record of honesty, ethics, and responsibility and I don't trust them as far as I can kick them with what is otherwise benign data on me.

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