Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

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By the way, I don't know about anybody else, but for the first time I can think of, I'm seriously concerned about the consequences of posting support for somebody like this online. I don't know how things will play out years down the road and who will do what with this information.

I don't know about you, but that's a chance I'm willing to take. As far as I'm concerned, Edward Snowden is an American hero and deserves a medal and a ticker-tape parade before he deserves to spend the rest of his life on the run, and possibly ultimately in a jail cell, or having his life taken prematurely by US operatives.

I think he did the right thing though, by going public. Presumably he knew the odds that "they" would track him down anyway, and by going public he has a chance to leverage popular public sentiment as a shield of sorts. As he says, it's a tactic to keep them from "going dirty". He might still wind up in jail, but there's a better chance now that they'll have to deal with him through ordinary judicial means, and (hopefully) no torture, or secret imprisonment at Guantanamo or whatever.

Hopefully Iceland (or maybe Ecuador!) will grant him political asylum and give him a shot at a semi-normal life, albeit far from his original home.

Postscript: To any NSA / CIA / FBI / etc. spooks who are reading this - blow me.

"To any NSA / CIA / FBI / etc. spooks who are reading this - blow me."

It is easy to feel anger towards those we perceive as oppressors, but if this nascent movement (I hope it is a movement!) is to have any success, thoughts like these from Gandhi should not be forgotten:

Real noncooperation is noncooperation with evil and not with the evil doer.

Noncooperation is not a hymn of hate.

My noncooperation is with methods and systems, never with men.

Gandhi's tactics, while plainly effective in his time and place, against his aggressors, should not be accepted as universalizable. It is not the only way to realize change, nor it is necessarily the most effective way to realize change in any particular situation, nor is it even necessarily a way that works in the slightest in any situation.

Noncompliance and noncooperation have a time and a place. We must avoid the temptation of viewing them as silver bullets simply because we find them pleasant, easy to stomach.

Reducing Gandhi's tactics to noncompliance and noncooperation is a great mistake. I think it is better to view them through what is in essence a key commonality between upper caste Hinduism and ancient Greek Stoicism, namely that all we can control are our own actions and responses, and therefore the greatest form of heroism is to lead the life we choose and to make that choice heroically, the rest of the world be damned.

The struggle then becomes one about respect and cooperation, without which no government can last, for even the greatest tyranny is executed not by one man giving orders but by everyone cooperating. The underdog struggles to inspire others. The state struggles to keep the facade of legitimacy. Sometimes the words "you are no longer our legitimate government" are stronger than all the guns in the world.

Imagine if half the country suddenly decided to no longer respect American law. They refused to pay taxes, obey traffic law, etc. What would the government do? In the end, they wouldn't be able to do anything. Once you understand that proposition, Gandhi's methods start looking a lot less gentle and a lot more dangerous.

>Imagine if half the country suddenly decided to no longer respect American law. They refused to pay taxes, obey traffic law, etc. What would the government do?

Start beating the shit out of people, killing them, etc., etc. and the people would very quickly relent.

Gandhi's tactics weren't even effective then. Look up Bhagat Singh. The only reason everyone gives credit for Indian independence to Gandhi instead of Singh is that Britain didn't want anymore Singhs.

As far as I'm concerned, Edward Snowden is an American hero...

He's a hero. Putting the word American in there is very, well, American. The NSA has done a lot worse by foreigners than Americans.

I think it's clear he meant that he is a hero to/for Americans, without anything further being implied in the positive or negative.

There's absolutely nothing unique about inserting the nationality of a hero that relates to Americans. I see it done regularly by citizens of other countries. In my observation, national pride is nearly universal.

I'm not American but I was clapping and cheering him loudly by the end of the interview. He is a hero for me.

> In my observation, national pride is nearly universal.

In my observation, it might be universal, but its degree varies greatly, with americans on the high end of the scale.

Nobody would say "a Greek hero".

In the spirit of inquiry, if the country is Greece, how likely are the following descriptions?

"A hero of Greece"

"A national hero"

"A hero to the fatherland"

"A hero to the people"

You'd say "a national hero" (the rest are not commonly used). The person can be any nationality, but he's a hero to the nation.

I HOPE there is a NSA / CIA / FBI spook going through this...because this man and his courage should shake the rust off of people, who are in a position to witness the tyranny of those in power(just like our whistle-blower) and take a stand and start caring more about what is the right thing to do and not what everyone around them seems to be doing.

Whatever your judgement about what to do is, the very fact that we have to start thinking about this is telling.

This is how we achieve real change, by real heroes like mindcrime standing up and saying blow me. They are sure to fall.

We all do what we can.

Admitting weakness is a virtue in some religions.

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