Hacker News Reader

Comment by metalliqaz | Hacker News Reader

Crazy that people still believe this stupid lie, easily debunked by 30 seconds on Wikipedia.

Even crazier is that the people who really wanted to string Snowden up by the neck were the conservatives, because they love law enforcement and are willing to give up freedom in order to fight Islamic terrorism. In other words, supporting Big Brother despite ostensibly wanting less government.

Crazier still is that those same people, the ones who were demonizing Snowden for ending up in Russia, are now in love with Assange and Putin because Trump.

"Two things are infinite: the Universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the Universe."

View on HN

> Even crazier is that the people who really wanted to string Snowden up by the neck were the conservatives

I strongly feel that this had bipartisan support across the aisles. Obama supported it, despite his pledge to protect whistle blowers. Hillary was no different.

It's true that this was bipartisan amongst elected officials, and strangely to me, a number of liberal people in my native DC area that I still talk to. I think there were varying degrees though. Do you think Trump would have let Manning go for example? I'm not sure that even Hillary would have. And yet Obama did, eventually.

Also, there is little doubt in my mind that mutual hate of Hillary brought together WikiLeaks and several previously unlikely allies.

> you think Trump would have let Manning go for example? I'm not sure that even Hillary would have.

Of course not, I'm just trying to dispel the myth that the world is in black and white. You can't just hold the 'other' party accountable. We need to look in the mirror.

Powerthirsty psychopaths of all factions unite against the puppets marching of on theire own.

That is what terrifies me--people who are ostensibly conservative but then are all pro-military and pro-big-government and you find out all they want is some tax break or other stupid consideration that benefits them personally. Democrats are not immune to this behavior, either--I have met few who disfavor big government and think they can somehow control the beast. They can't.

I guess those conservatives who have military backgrounds felt that Snowden betrayed them and put them in greater jeopardy. The problem with that is, it's hard to prove the value of what Snowden did. Harm may well have been done in the small, but at the same time there was great justice in the large. Being a whistleblower was the ethical choice; if you look the other way, you're no better than the prison guards at the concentration camps who weren't full-on members of the Nazi Party.

Snowden leaked a lot about foreign intelligence programs run by the US. That's not whistleblowing, that's espionage. it's naive to think China and Russia helped him pass through without something in exchange.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com