Gods and Monsters

I've just read something on Edward Snowden and I have an opinion about him. I don't know much about it so this is a wide-angle, soft-focus view. To me he is a hero. What he did can't be said to be generically right, as a form of behavior, but in this instance it was right.

It doesn't matter what he intended or if he's a good person or has a big ego or what. At root it all has to do with nukes, no doubt, weaponry that is a totalitarian's dream, a great equalizer. The United States has struggled in trying to come to terms with the nukes.

They are major military mojo. And a paranoid's best friend. Our country was designed to be administratively inefficient, to protect us from totalitarianism, so there's a natural tension. We can level the field by becoming more totalitarian, with respect to the Russians.

Or whomever, and that's a big whomever because the people who developed a taste for fear or got overly attached to it out of familiarity are going to want fear and a focus for it, and with nukes that's easy, though "Islamo-fascism" is catchy and may stick around.

And someone just made it up. Anyway, let's suppose that America has gone somewhat totalitarian out of neurosis over the nukes and other threats, real and invented, and that Snowden is anti-totalitarian--not the man, necessarily, but what he represents.

I think this is the case. And let's look at the fear supposedly justifying things. Do nukes really change everything? I don't think so. Annihilation is annihilation, once or ten times over. One of life's greatest challenges is to put yourself in another's shoes and situation, historically.

When has annihilation not been a threat? It wasn't so long ago that people didn't know to look for rational explanations for things. You start with this, reason, one would think. Once it was all ascribed to gods and monsters to help with the fear. Now consider James Inhofe.

We have a guy in charge of a Senate committee on the environment who believes in causal explanations having to do with gods, and similar people in all kinds of positions of power in Washington and remember, we have nukes, and now no allegiance to reason. 

Oh, 9/11: fear-motivated people were in charge then, anti-rationalists and true believers. The USA as we knew it ceased to exist. It was never a perfect country but damn good in some respects and there were those who loved it in a grownup way, accepting its flaws.

Snowden is the antidote to this, the work of a fear-mongering coterie, our totalitarians. If they weren't justified then Snowden is. I won't fault him. But those other guys, the lovers of fear, have a lot to answer for, as Snowden has shown. And read about ABLE ARCHER '83.

In Wikipedia or wherever, when you have a chance, if you think it doesn't matter. See where the irrational guys can get you when they decide to have some fun and play war games. They almost got us all killed, all the while swearing that they are wise and militarily competent.