General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: What the hell, DU? [View all]Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)You saved me some typing.
I'll just add that the NSA and its contractors employ lots of people at Snowden's level, many of whom are probably libertarians (not to mention racists or homophobes or tax evaders or whatever), yet we don't see threads about those people. Snowden isn't particularly important. He's neither an elected official nor a presidential appointee. If some DUers nevertheless devote so much effort to detailing the biography of this particular cog in the surveillance machine, then there's a clear implication that anything unsavory in his past is somehow relevant to the accuracy of his assertions about current U.S. Government practices.
SunSeeker is correct to the extent that this implication isn't spelled out, presumably because it's so obviously indefensible. Instead, people rely on ad hominem attacks on Snowden (and on Greenwald) as distractions. Deflecting attention from the surveillance would have the same effect as demonstrating logically that the surveillance is a good thing, but the former line of argument is much easier to cobble together.