An Open Letter to Whoever (NSA, Russia... Stuff)

[cthulu2016]

Last edited Thu Apr 17, 2014, 06:07 PM - Edit history (1)

I have intense contempt for the whole "NSA critics=Putin Lovers" thing. It is McCarthyite, IMO. It was, and remains, one of the lowest things I've seen here.

I am not enamored, however, of anyone rising to take that shabby bait and finding anything good about Russia in the fact that Snowden took being a propaganda pawn over life in prison. (His only two real-world options, as things played out.) I would have also accepted the Russian asylum, but have done so while recognizing that it was offered only to harm the USA, not for the betterment of anyone, anywhere, except a Russian nationalist interest in a weaker or less influential USA.

I am a strongly anti-Putin person. I have no use whatsoever for the co-option of elements of the American left by Russian propagandists. It is an embarrassment to every leftist anything, anywhere.

So I am, on balance, a "Putin lover" who is a rabid Putin-hater. I think Putin is probably currently the greatest individual driver of global instability, though the greatest big picture driver of global instability is unsustainable inequity in allocation of resources. (Like always.)

I just don't fit in this "Gobama!" versus "Putin's not so bad!" dichotomy.

I did not favor bombing Syria, but the idea that the huge precipitating Sarin gas attack was launched by the rebels, rather than Assad forces, was an idiotic media hoax. (Another disappointing case of a co-opted conspiracy-minded extreme internet left parroting Russian propoganda.) You really could disfavor bombing Syria without being a conspiracy nut. Isn't there some world where one can be against bombing Syria without thinking Kerry is exactly the same as Dick Cheney? I live in such a world, but it seems to want for room.

Obama is a very good president by American standards, but also a vision-lacking, core-lacking corporatist. He is part of the national power structure. No crime in it... it is what it is. The NSA ia all kinds of fucked up. Snowden is a criminal, but so what? On balance, it is probably better than he did what he did, though he probably should have done it differently. I think John Kerry is a poor Secretary of State, but I don't think he casually flat-out lies about intel, or installs Nazi governments. And the Russian expansion into territory it gave up when the USSR fell apart is a terrible thing.

So there.

[cthulu2016]

1. .