General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Re: Attacks on Snowden, Greenwald. How the fuck do people like that sleep at night? [View all]stupidicus
(2,570 posts)lacking any rebuttal value, and are largely motivated by tribal/cult-like impulses intended to protect their own egos as much as that of the dear leader they are almost always directly or indirectly defending with their attacks on them.
I'd say their motives differ little from the recent rightwinger latching onto the NYT story about wmds, which was almost a certainty considering that as recently as 2012 the polls showed that 63% of repubs believed we found wmds in Iraq -- nobody wants to think that they voted for someone who'd do such a thing.
Many, myself included, have long made the same case you are here -- that the BS about the messengers in this case, as well as all of us imaginary BHO-haters, etc, etc, etc, is nothing more than a distraction and subject change to delay or avoid having to defend the indefensible. We'll see many more years of this should HC take the helm next as well.
Imo the only "reality-based" voters these days are those of us that resigned ourselves to the lesser of two evils choice. While it doesn't reduce the sense of outrage much when things like the NSA revelations occur, it eliminates a major impediment to the level of objectivity required to have a handle on "reality" that an ego or cult-blinders can and certainly do provide. They establish their guilt of this simply by the way the actual NSA issues take a back seat to their outrage over those messengers, in terms of the level of outrage they express over those revelations, and the disproportionate amount -- considering the relative importance of those two guys -- of time and text they spend bashing those two to the almost total exclusion in most cases, of bashing what it is they have revealed about the NSA.
I'd call that the consent to or complicity in the NSA problem, as silence often is.
good post