It's hate. Period.

[BeyondGeography]

94. IMO, Obama's critics here are mostly sincere, as are his defenders

Far as I can discern from an Internet message board. There are some who have never gotten over him defeating Hillary, but they are relatively few in number and real easy to identify. Harder for me to take are the tinfoilers who never accept anything that people in authority say and can not be reasoned with.

But I think we need to accept that people with whom we disagree are acting in good conscience far more often than not. Even if it's hard to digest sometimes.

Now is clearly one of those times. When the Snowden thing broke, I did not want to hear about it, frankly. The President had been previously raked over the coals for utter bullshit, Benghazi/IRS/AP, a clear campaign to me at least that, having failed to defeat him in an election, his opponents were going to undermine him with innuendo.

My views have evolved. As much as I continue to see Snowden and Greenwald as partisans first, the NSA's potential to overreach is a real issue, and they have done a service by bringing it to the fore, even if they have mangled some key details and Snowden himself has gone off the rails by flipping secrets to foreign governments. Technology will continue to get exponentially more powerful and there is a lot of money to be made from fear. It's heartbreaking to see billions go into bureaucratic surveillance empire building when so many programs that directly benefit people are hurting for resources.

But, here's where it gets pear-shaped. I continue to believe in the personal integrity and the judgment of Barack Obama. He is not infallible, but I think he will end up in basically the right place on the issue of striking a balance between security and privacy. That is enough to be called an Administration lackey, or, as one highly-recommended OP here the other night maintained, someone who prefers to live in an authoritarian state.

Well bullshit to that. But I also reject the charge of racism that is being made here. The left was in many ways just as hard on Clinton as it is on Obama. I know I was (yes, Virginia, it's possible to consider oneself a member of the left and support President Obama). Until we can point to specific race-based comments, we should avoid this charge and stick to substance.