Media Hysteria

If the media circus regarding Snowdon was not so pernicious it would be utterly hilarious on more than one level; first being that the real story is about what the government is doing, not about Snowdon’s flight from government prosecution for blowing the whistle on government malfeasance. It’s positively awe inspiring to watch the degree to which the media has “missed the point,” except that they have not done so by error, they have done so deliberately, as water carriers for the government.

Then there is the reasoning given for Snowdon’s “flight from justice,” which in reality can be summed up in two words which no one is mentioning; “Bradley Manning.” I suspect that if Snowdon thought that he would receive justice in this country he might well have stayed and faced it, but given the years of torture to which Bradley Manning has been subjected by the Obama administration and the kangaroo court that is trying him now, Snowdon reasonably chooses to take his chances in international flight.

Finally is the utter hysteria with which the media has reached over the “criminal of the century” and the need to capture him at all costs. To hear the media tell it this guy ranks up there with Ames, the Rosenbergs and Hanssen, and maybe worse, for telling the world what most of it already knew, namely that the American government has been watching who is making phone calls and what is being transmitted on the internet. There may be someone in the outer reaches of Mongolia who didn’t know that.

Not to mention the absurdity of the claim that letting terrorists know we are monitoring their phone calls "endangers national security.” Terrorist cells can no more destroy this nation than can a herd of house cats, and the term “national security” has been so overused as to have become as meaningless as the concurrent word “terrorist.”

As horrible the event was, “national security” does not mean preventing two guys from deploying pressure cooker bombs at a sporting event to kill three people. We need to prevent it, but it is not a matter of “national security.”

Edward Snowdon threatened the unfettered power of the federal government over the people of this nation, and that government wants to make an example out of him to prevent others from following his example.