Back several years ago when I had my nascent media career - I think it was 2007 when I won the Aaron Hawkins Award, I invented a term called 'famousity'. I thought I could be considered a media person of interest but not quite a third rate celebrity, but I was on my way. I wondered aloud as I do from time to time whether in a dire situation it is better to be famous or not, concluding that it is.
But now I had a startling thought, which is that depending upon who whispers what to whom, infamousity is much more likely to bogard all the safety credits one might amass. I am thinking, of course, about the chances that anybody with any clout in media bothers to read significant parts of a body of work found about any individual accused of misbehavior. I conclude briefly that one must enter a web of famousity and credibility if one is to avoid infamousity.
We are a nation of stooges, most of us, and there is a significantly gullible chatting class who can be relied on to hold any degree of ridiculous opinions. I know this because of the number of people who 'like' the Rosetta Stone Language Software on Facebook. (15,000) and where on Earth could I manage to get 15,000 'likes'?
I thought about a very reasonable essay on the foolishness of Snowden with which I agree. My last writing on the man made too many points. But I do lean more forcibly towards certifying his insanity, and perhaps it is true that he lived in a world too solopsistic to give him the benefit of a doubt, which is the main argument of that essay.
What is evident at this moment is that the poor boy is a man without a country, as is anyone who asserts the need for the defence of human rights. Nations don't step outside of their own laws of civil rights to extend such airy fairy human rights to strangers - not even to those bearing gifts. It's difficult enough in most places to have ones civil rights consistently defended. Snowden must clearly realize by now that he must choose sides because that's all there are. No third ways. For him to move forward, he must further expose the US to the specific benefit of some country that wishes to play enemy to the United States. And thus he must become more infamous than he already is.
This is all reminescent of the Fencing Problem. Snowden managed a great hack, a magnificent theft. Or maybe it wasn't so great and he just walked off with the keys he was given. But he ended up in possession of a great treasure that wasn't his. So he imagined, like all theives, that such treasure would enrich his life. But the treasure of state secrets can only be spent in a very few ways, and the people who sell them are spies by definition. You cannot sell or even give away such treasure and be repaid in any other way than as spies. That's the size of the market and the definition of the currency.
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