What was Snowden Supposed to do?

The Edward Snowden story is a trip: what exactly did that big idiot think was going to be accomplished by running into the arms of an enemy?

If he’d spent any time at all within the institution he would have known that the institution would close ranks to protect itself, resulting in a systemic worsening of the very issues he claims to have wanted to address.

Alas, his miscalculation reveals that he’d not been part of the intelligence apparatus long enough to know something that most would know from a place of intuition.

So that’s a valid criticism, but the push-back I can expect is also completely valid: just what was he supposed to do?

It’s a great question. Let’s play it out.

If you press people across the political spectrum, they’ll admit that we are entitled to certain rights to privacy that are now routinely trod upon in the interest of security, in particular the mass surveillance that’s now become nearly ubiquitous.

Many people will admit that they may privately sympathize with Snowden’s claimed outrage, but they disagree with his methods (going to the Russians).

Ok, so again: what were his other options?

What if, for instance: he chose to keep his head down and work within the circles of activists, journalists, whistleblowers and try and rally an effort from a more orchestrated perspective?

As it turns out, that doesn’t work.

First off: the media ignores your story unless the feds or the cops are actively hunting you down, and even then they tend to tell a story that’s a mirror reflection of what they received from the feds.

In effect: the media is essentially an institutional mouthpiece that’s blind to dissidents, whistleblowers, or activists UNLESS that person has been platformed by the institution as a “bad guy.”

You could always try and steer yourself into the circles of “independent journalists” or “activist journalists,” but that doesn’t really work, either: they won’t tell your story unless it’s a story they consider worth telling, which ultimately comes down to whether or not a person has an established brand on Twitter.

The activists themselves won’t platform you, either, because each of them is inside their own well of suffering, and don’t have the chops.

This is why I keep saying that the era of whistleblowing is effectively over. Dissidents are therefore in that same category, no?

Without institutional endorsement as a bad guy, the “good guy activists” won’t acknowledge the story as important.

There’s no other recourse BUT to run to the Russians, and as we’ve seen: that shit didn’t work. It actually made things worse than before.

Q: what if the institution endorses a dissident or whistleblower as a good guy?

The question is absurd, but it’s worth asking, because it’s actually kind of interesting.

What if a person has been thrown down the stairwell, driven literally into the streets by the institution, but in a manner that’s ignored by the media and therefore the activists?

What if the person designs a solution that is so novel and beneficial that the institution AND the media would otherwise platform the solution immediately, particularly in a time of need?

Turns out, they won’t do that, either; the risk (of course) is that the person will use the opportunity to platform their story and the stories of others.

So: whistleblowing is dead, as is a place for actual dissidents.

It’s world war III: which side are the bad guys?

We are told that Russia silences dissidents, but as it turns out: so do the “good guys,” inclusive to the activists themselves.

I low key think that part of the story is most fascinating.