is a edward snowden a hero? a follow-up.

[scarletwoman]

49. Exactly. I don't give a rip about analyses of Snowden the person, they're totally beside the point.

Every conversation that focuses on Snowden instead of the massive infrastructure of the Surveillance State being built up all around us is a wasteful and dangerous diversion from the core issues that we ought to be discussing.

Furthermore, the word "hero" has been tossed around so casually for so many years that it has frankly lost all meaning.

Snowden DID perform a service by bringing up the subject of the Surveillance State in such a way that the passive, slumbering masses at least blinked their eyes for a moment and said, "huh?".

And of course, it's inevitable that the establishment/media complex would quickly rise to the occasion and bring the whole machinery of the system to bear on flogging the distraction that is the person of Snowden himself.

The key questions that need to be asked have nothing to do with Snowden. The key questions we need to be asking is how such a Surveillance State infrastructure can be tolerated in a so-called democracy. And how much of our national treasure is being thrown down the ever-greedier maw of National Security and to whose benefit?

Snowden? Pfft. Maybe is he is just a stupid punk with delusions of grandeur. So what? He did what he did and got a sorely needed conversation about the Surveillance State started. Let's take advantage of what he did by having THAT conversation - the one about the Surveillance State. NOT the conversation about Snowden - which is what the PTB would prefer that we have.