How the Professional Left's Blind Obama Hatred Got them Played by a Far-Right Nutjob

by Spandan C/The People's View

Some outlets reported last week that NSA leaker and fugitive Edward Snowden was caught into a bit of hypocrisy: public chat records indicate that back in the ancient times of 2009, he wanted leakers "shot in the balls." Yeah, he said that. But that's not all he said. Oh, no. The Technology site Ars Technica posted extensive public chat logs from Snowden, then using the monkier TheTrueHOOHA, that confirms what I had suspected since finding his campaign contributions to Glenn Greenwald's straight crush Ron Paul. 

So let's talk about this man that has been granted hero status by the Left's loudest prognosticators and provocateurs. The transcripts released by Ars Technica are about a lot more than Snowden's previous contempt for leakers. He hated social security, loved Ron Paul and his ideas, and peddled the NRA's garbage about fighting the government with guns. He suggested punishing both leakers and publications that publish the leaks. All in all, Edward Snowden is a right wing, anti-government nutjob who has managed to become the hero of so many on the reactionary Left.

Ars Technica reports that Ed Snowden is not much more than your typical, teabagging, cookie-cutter right wing nutjob who hates Obama. He complained about everything from the president's appointment to the CIA to gun control to how Social Security has turned old people into lazy moochers.

 Once Obama took office, Snowden groaned about his policies with increasing frequency. Fears that Obama might revive an assault weapons ban didn't sit well with him as a defender of the Second Amendment. Another sticking point was social security. Snowden was an individualist, even when it was unpopular; he saw little need for a safety net.

Here are just some of the choice quotes from the freakout Left's new hero. I have modified the transcripts only to change "TheTrueHOOHA" to "SNOWDEN" (for ease of following), and to highlight through formatting.

Gun-nut:

 User: the restrictions were made to appease the conservatives to get another bill passed. fucking cons.

SNOWDEN: See, that's why I'm goddamned glad for the second amendment. Me and all my lunatic, gun-toting NRA compatriots would be on the steps of Congress before the C-Span feed finished.

Something tells me Edward Snowden is more fit to be a Tea Party candidate for office in the mold of Sharron Angle (of the infamous "Second Amendment remedies") than a liberal icon - if the screaming "progressives" on the Internet were still capable of having a value system other than "we hate Obama," that is.

Choice words for Social Security and the New Deal:

 SNOWDEN: save money? cut this social security bullshit
User11: hahahayes
User18: Yeah! Fuck old people!
User11: social security is bullshit
User11: let's just toss old people out in the street
User18: Old people could move in with [User11].
User11: NOOO
User11: they smell funny
SNOWDEN: Somehow, our society managed to make it hundreds of years without social security just fine
SNOWDEN: you fucking retards
SNOWDEN: Magically the world changed after the new deal, and old people became made of glass
SNOWDEN: yeah, that makes sense
User11: wow
User11: you are just so fucking stupid
SNOWDEN: yeah, [User11]. and you're quite a gem
User19: and magically, life expectancy has doubled in the last 100 years.funny how that works.
SNOWDEN: [User19], you don't think modern medicine has something to do with that? no? it's social security? wow. I guess I missed that.
User11: hurr wait a second, life expectancy has shot up in recent times along with the dissolution of the communal family unit in exchange for the nuclear family
User11: gee i guess we might need to create a safety net for the sudden glut of helpless elderly????
SNOWDEN: they wouldn't be fucking helpless if you weren't sending them fucking checks to sit on their ass and lay in hospitals all day
User11: you are so goddamned stupd*pid
User11: PUT OLD PEOPLE TO WORK IN THE FIELDS
SNOWDEN: my grandmother is eighty fucking three this year, and you know what? she still supports herself working as a goddamned hairdresser

 His grandmother would be so proud, who he also claims doesn't support Social Security.

And his opinion on the racist, wingbat Ron Paul? "Dreamy."

But but but, I can already hear the screamers, you're distracting from the point! It's about government secrecy! I wonder how Snowden felt about that? In January 2009, less than two weeks before Obama took office, the New York Times reported on a leak that President Bush had rejected Israel's request for bunker-busters to hit Iran's nuclear facility. Pointing to that story, Snowden not only advocated for the leakers to be "shot in the balls," but also for the reporting organization (in this case the NY Times) to go out of business.

 SNOWDEN: HOLY SHIT
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/washington/11iran.html?_r=1&hp
SNOWDEN: WTF NYTIMES
SNOWDEN: Are they TRYING to start a war?
Jesus christ
they're like wikileaks
User19: they're just reporting, dude.
SNOWDEN: They're reporting classified shit
User19: shrugs
SNOWDEN:
User19: meh
SNOWDEN: moreover, who the fuck are the anonymous sources telling them this?
SNOWDEN: those people should be shot in the balls.

Rather lovely sentiments, don't you think? I wonder when Snowden and Wikileaks will explain why he doesn't think he deserves the same punishment he himself prescribed for leakers. That's not all, of course. He lashed out at the New York Times for "blowing" the illegal Bush administration program to warrantlessly wiretap Americans, referring to the Times reporting on the matter in 2006.

 SNOWDEN: these are the same people who blew the whole "we could listen to osama's cell phone" thing the same people who screwed us on wiretapping over and over and over again [sic] Thank god they're going out of business.
User19: the NYT?
SNOWDEN: Hopefully they'll finally go bankrupt this year.
yeah.

So Snowden was a man all for illegally spying on Americans when Bush was in office, but suddenly when Obama takes office and brings the programs under legal cover and gets a court involved, Saint Snowden can stand it no more. Shocked, shocked I tell you to hear there's gambling in Casa Blanca.

Come to think of it, the Professional Left unites with Edward Snowden on that point exactly - the blind, likely racist, pure demonization of this president. After all, this really isn't about privacy or security, is it? If it were, we would be seeing mobilizations and hearing calls to change the law rather than screams of 'scandals' about a program which even the toughest critic admits is perfectly legal under the law as it stands today. We would be seeing a laser focus not on obtaining the freedom of a criminal but on a vigorous debate about the merits of the law itself. Yet, rarely do we hear those calls on "liberal" sites like Daily Kos or on "liberal" shows coughing up a spleen defending Ed Snowden (I'm talking to you, Chris Hayes). What we hear far more often is the lashing out, the "free Snowden" cheerleading, and the unadulterated contempt for the president as well as rule of law. No, it's not about concerns about privacy. This is about concern-trolling about privacy.

Edward Snowden is a pathetic excuse for a hero or a whistleblower. He is a lunatic libertarian far-right nutjob that compromised national security for his personal fame. He has no values, no ethics, no moral core. He is a right wing blowhard that is playing the Professional Left for everything they are worth (which, thankfully, is not much). He is using their Blind hatred of a black president named Barack Obama to make them do the bidding of his own agenda which has nothing to do with transparency nor democracy. And the Professional Left is running right along, singing the praises of this ring-wing nutjob, licking this traitor's boots.