Glenn Beck Continues to Lie About Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement

Where is Dave Chappelle when you need him?

Glenn Beck is a professional liar who has created his own alternate reality. For his fans and devotees, Glenn Beck is a messiah and truth-teller. Those who are not part of his media cult quite rightly see him as a carnival barker--and soon to be real estate mogul who is building his own libertarian theme park and gated community as a means to fleece and grift his public.

As part of his shtick, Glenn Beck is fond of channeling the legacy of Brother Doctor Martin Luther King Jr..

He does this because Dr. King is part of a pantheon of American heroes who have been stripped and robbed of their radicalism in order to make them palatable for Middle America. As a leading figure on the White Right, Beck is dedicated to stealing Doctor King's legacy as a way of legitimating the Tea Party GOP's political agenda. Ultimately, the legacy of Dr. King--and the broader civil rights movement--is a set of handy icons and images which work like a magical fleece for Republicans and conservatives.

By donning those vestments, the ugliness and anti-black and brown bigotry of the post-civil rights era Republican Party and conservative movement can be hidden behind their dishonest use of phrases like "I have a dream" or the merits of judging a man "by the content of his character" as opposed to his skin color. The post civil rights era Right-wing in America can then call black and brown people the "real racists" who hate "whites" and practice "reverse discrimination."

The masterfully contorted logic of conservative populists then comfortably arrives at the conclusion that white people are oppressed in America. And moreover, Dr. King died to protect white folks from "racism" and "discrimination."

Liars lie. Consequently, it is not surprising that Glenn Beck would repeatedly misrepresent Dr. King's legacy, life, and struggles. It is the brazen nature of the lie which demands comment: Dr. King stood for the exact opposite of the John Birch Libertarian herrenvolk white nationalist politics endorsed by Glenn Beck.

Dr. King and the broader civil rights movement would reject Glenn Beck's declaration of war on "illegal aliens" as an affront to the sense of shared humanity and commitment to social justice which drove the Black and Brown Freedom Struggles.

It was Dr. King working on the the Poor People's campaign who wanted to advocate for an Economic Bill of Rights for all Americans and specifically called out how "newcomers" and "minorities" were being exploited and oppressed in the United States by rich elites.

The efforts to organize poor migrant laborers by Cesar Chavez and others is also a deafening rebuke to Glenn Beck's myth-making machine.

The Dr. King who said the following would be vilified by the Tea Party and Glenn Beck as a traitor, and a communist who hates the "producers" and is guilty of "class warfare."

We are coming to ask America to be true to the huge promissory note that it signed years ago. And we are coming to engage in dramatic nonviolent action, to call attention to the gulf between promise and fulfillment; to make the invisible visible.

Why do we do it this way? We do it this way because it is our experience that the nation doesn’t move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for black people until it is confronted massively, dramatically in terms of direct action.

Ideas and claims on social reality do not exist in a vacuum.

Political claims are especially beholden and dependent upon a superstructure or architecture that gives them meaning and coherence. Some time ago, when I offered up my alternative history of the United States as believed by the Tea Party GOP, I was signalling to such a philosophical and meta-level concern.

In all, what is the vision of the world and of history that sustains the fictions which Glenn Beck offers up to his viewers? And do responsible people actually empower Glenn Beck and the Right-wing alternative reality media by responding to their propaganda and untruths?

Societies are stable when its members share a set of agreed upon values and norms about the nature of empirical reality. Societies come undone when its members cannot agree on those basic facts and truths.

Glenn Beck and his ilk are not harmless entertainers. They are propagandists who are helping to create a broken society where good governance (what is needed to invigorate and transform America forward) is impossible, and in which they can rail and chant against the very problems they are helping to create, all the while selling themselves as saviors.

The political and social polarization in the United States has created a crisis of legitimacy and failed governance. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and the members of the Right-wing media entertainment machine are paradoxically both the problem and the solution.

They are poisoning the town's well water and then spontaneously and miraculously showing up the next day with a cure. I wonder, will the villagers ever wake up and see who their real enemies are?

Some Advice for Bloggers and Other Online Personalities from Johnny Carson

I hope that your Father's Day was restful, reflective, well, and nurturing.

I have explored the meta-game of online writing and blogging in a number of posts here on We Are Respectable Negroes. I am very fascinated by what separates the "also rans" and those others who quickly give up on writing (in any form or genre) from those who stick with it and find some amount of success--however defined.

Of course, timing and luck are critical to life and professional success. Talent matters, but is it less important than sheer volume and persistence? Who knows? Thus, the mystery of those elite few who are both 1) talented and 2) able to make a living from their creative work.

Writing online is a type of performance art. And as I alluded to here and elsewhere, politics is a performance as well, one that most closely resembles professional wrestling. While watching the very mediocre WWE pay per view Sunday night--yes, CM Punk did beat Chris Jericho here in Chicago for the former's return match--I kept thinking about the core elements that make professional wrestlers and other media personalities successful.

They both need to be sincere, establish some type of "connection" with the audience, feign (or actually channel) vulnerability, and be themselves "with the volume turned up."

Professional wrestlers, as well as other actors/personalities have to understand the medium in which they are working, the informal rules that dictates how they relate to the audience and public, and how their craft is evaluated by their peers and gatekeepers. Adhering to formula will only get a person so far; how one innovates and improvises around it, I would suggest, is the key to long-term success.

There is found wisdom and knowledge everywhere...if we are open to it.

Saturday night I was watching PBS's great series American Masters which featured a documentary on the legendary late night TV host Johnny Carson.

American Masters observed how Carson was working in TV, a genre which has famously been described by cultural theorist Marshall McLuhan as a "cool medium". As American Masters suggests, even by those standards, Johnny Carson was "cooler" than the medium he occupied and mastered.

As I often talk about in my podcast series, I am very fascinated by how smart accomplished people go about doing their creative work. This is the essence of process, what are the nuts and bolts of how creative work gets done on a timetable and for specific ends and goals.

Johnny Carson's process of structuring his performance as a story, one that offers up a tour of the day's events, resonated with me as an insight into what separates those who are successful as members of the online commentariat from those who are less so.

A blog or other type of social media website is a product.

Ultimately, as in professional wrestling, the People will let you know by their cheers and boos and paying attention (or not) if one is "succeeding" or not as a showman. Carson mastered that process, while also realizing that he was a businessman selling a product and a brand name called "Johnny Carson", the success of which was predicated on being transparent and relateable.

Yet, and here is the existential dilemma, what if a person wants to be a showman who both educates and enlightens? Who are those bards today? And are people laughing with them or at them?

Superman Deserves Better: Man of Steel is a Loud and Obnoxious Film Signifying Nothing

Man of Steel is an exercise in exhaustion and tedium.

When a superhero movie about an iconic character makes the viewer wish it would end then something is wrong. Man of Steel is big on spectacle; it is weak on character development.

The movie hits all the obligatory points. Man of Steel alludes to Superman as an allegory for Jesus Christ. The film also deploys the visual lexicon of September 11th.

But ultimately, Man of Steel works better as a series of exciting movie trailers than a 143 minute film.

The central problem with Man of Steel is that its creators--Christopher Nolan, David Goyer, and Zack Snyder--offer few if any reasons for the audience to care about Kal-El, the son of Krypton who we Earthlings know as Superman, or the relationship he forms with Lois Lane (played by Amy Adams) in the movie.

Man of Steel contains many great possibilities--for example, Snyder's exploration of Superman's home is a revelation for the film franchise. Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner, as Superman's biological and adoptive fathers respectively, are also bright spots in a bloated screenplay and script. Although Costner is given too little to do, and the relationship between he and Clark Kent is too little developed, Costner's sincerity and warmth transcend the shortcomings in Goyer's writing.

Michael Shannon and his lieutenant Antje Traue are also positives in the film. Shannon, to his credit, does not try to channel the earlier version of General Zod as portrayed by legendary character actor Terence Stamp.

Michael Shannon is General Zod. However, he is a General Zod who comfortably exists in a different film universe.

Henry Cavill lacks charisma in the title role. He is a chiseled mass of flesh, a walking human statue. But, Man of Steel does not allow his personality to shine through. Consequently, Cavill is a human prop in a joyless role. As David Carradine ingeniously explained in the movie Kill Bill Volume 2, the character known as Superman is supposed to be a critique of the human condition. In Man of Steel, Henry Cavill is a two dimensional character who happens to fly and wears the uniform of the guy known as Superman.

Because of poor writing, he is never given a chance, unlike Christopher Reeve, to truly embody the part.

Superman's origin story is part of comic book lore. As such, it is familiar to most viewers because Superman has become central to global popular culture. Man of Steel's writers take a risk here by returning to such well-trodden terrain. They easily could have alluded to Superman's origins and began the movie in its second act where Kal-El had already been raised on Earth by the Kent family.

Man of Steel is a stronger movie because of its creators' decision to return to the beginning in order to establish their version of the Superman mythology.

The film's story arc is a familiar one. Superman must learn to grapple with being, quite literally, a god among men. He learns humility, patience, love, and kindness from his parents, while also being taught by them a sense of obligation and loyalty to humanity. Kal-El is an alien outsider. Man of Steel is at its best when it explores those struggles. Inevitably, Superman learns of his origins and is tutored by the "ghost" of his dead father in the film's version of the Fortress of Solitude.

Inevitably, General Zod arrives, and offers an ultimatum to the people of Earth. They must surrender the alien refuge and fugitive Kal-El. Chaos ensues. Metropolis is devastated. Lois and Superman develop the first hints of attraction and love. Superman wins over the people of Earth. Kal-El becomes the bespectacled Clark Kent who works at the newspaper The Daily Planet and the movie ends, leaving the audience to wait for the inevitable sequel.

The familiarity of Superman's story is not a weakness for Man of Steel.

Superman is a modern fable that resonates precisely because of its familiarity. Thus, the challenge for the story-teller is to maintain the core essence of a legendary epic, while improvising around its themes in compelling and interest ways.

Unfortunately, Synder, Nolan, and Goyer are not up to that challenge in Man of Steel.

Pick Your Poison: The Library at the GITMO Gulag or Sesame Street Teaches Children About Going to Jail

I am not ashamed of being an American. Unfortunately, in a country where mythic beliefs about American exceptionalism, and a media that restricts the public discourse to the "approved narrative," critical thinking--and more importantly critical deeds--are often slurred as being unAmerican or treasonous.

For example, see the bloviating of Republicans like Representative Stephen King of New York.

In keeping with this logic, I also do not believe in legitimating the empty and distracting concept known as "white guilt." White folks do not need to feel guilty about anything except their own individual choices and deeds.

What I do ask is that all people take responsibility for their unearned privileges, and how individuals are connected to another through institutions, as well as a system of power that rewards people based on if they are members of a group arbitrarily labeled as "white" and punishes those who are "black" and "brown."

In reading the following two news items today, I am do not feel guilt for being an American. However, I do feel that we have a sense of responsibility and moral culpability for the policy decisions that are being made in our name.

The prison at Guantanamo Bay is an embodiment of America's post 9-11 derangement. Domestic spying, targeted assassinations, drone murder, extraordinary renditions, and all manners of policies anathema to the best spirit of what we as a people should be, were legitimated in that moment more than ten years ago.

Osama Bin Laden may be dead; however, in many ways he won a great victory on 9-11.

Guantanamo Bay is a stain, a Kafkaesque nightmare, and black mark on the United States. Through the creation of social distance what is out of sight is made to be out of mind. The problem: the American people know what is going at Guantanamo Bay, a prison where most of the prisoners are innocent, and they choose to ignore it.

This New York Times story about the library at Guantanamo Bay prison should be sickening to all people of conscience:

If they obey prison rules, the 166 detainees may peer at the spines through the slots in their doors and check out two titles at a time, or make specific requests... 

Milton has a small budget for new acquisitions, and detainees’ lawyers and family members can send books to specific inmates through the International Committee of the Red Cross. Those copies are first donated to the library and then passed along to the prisoners, who can keep them in their cells for up to 60 days, rather than the usual 30. 

David Remes, a lawyer for Guantánamo detainees, told me one client requested romance novels, while others have asked for skiing, surfing and mountain-climbing magazines, “because they never see nature.” His client Shaker Aamer, a former resident of Britain, took a liking to George Orwell. “I sent him a copy of ‘1984,’ and he said he read it about three times and that it perfectly captured the psychological reality of being at Gitmo,” Remes said.

"If you prick me do I not bleed?"

When the blowback comes from America's abuses at GITMO and abroad, mom and pop middle America will ask again, "why do they hate us so?"

They should already know the answer.

The venerable institution that is the Sesame Street TV show has helped to prepare children for the meanness and unfairness of life. As such, it has featured episodes on the Iraq War, terrorism, Aids and HIV, and Hurricane Katrina. Given that the original purpose of Sesame Street, and for which it has been much derided by conservatives, was to help poor and working class inner-city black and brown youth improve their language and cognitive skills, such topics are essential for young viewers

The United States is an incarceration society. Two million people are held in its prisons and jails.

Among poor and inner city African-Americans for example, an encounter with the prison industrial complex is a rite of passage, where at least one million of them are in jail or otherwise monitored by the "justice" system at some point in their lives. Moreover, 1 in 3 people on parole are African-American.

Families are being broken by what has been famously described as "the New Jim Crow." Sesame Street has chosen to respond to what is a new normal.

The long-running children’s series has released a new toolkit called “Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration” that includes videos, worksheets, and tips for both children and caregivers. The series is aimed at kids ages 2-7 years old, but the tips could be helpful for older kids and even adults, too. 

From Sesame Street’s website: 

The incarceration of a loved one can be very overwhelming for both children and caregivers. It can bring about big changes and transitions. In simple everyday ways, you can comfort your child and guide her through these tough moments. With your love and support she can get through anything that comes her way. Here are some tools to help you with the changes your child is going through. 

Along with videos, the series also includes a list of helpful tips to help children through the complicated emotions that go along with talking about a loved one’s incarceration...

We judge a society by its prisons, schools, and hospitals. We can also measure a society by how it treats the weak and the vulnerable. Based on the gulag at Guantanamo Bay, the many millions in jail, and a general culture of cruelty and disposability, the United States is in an existential and moral crisis.

Some years ago Brother Marvin Gay presciently asked "what's going on?" If he were alive to write a sequel today, sadly, the question would remain the same. He and we would also still be searching for answers.

A Question for the Jurors: Is George Zimmerman Evil?

The trial of George Zimmerman for shooting and killing Travyon Martin has begun with the selection of jurors. It promises to be a spectacle where dividing lines of race, as well as competing notions of what constitutes “justice”, will play out on a national and global stage.

The public debate over George Zimmerman’s innocence, and the a priori assumption by no small number of white folks (and some others), that an unarmed teenager named Trayvon Martin fleeing for his life from a stalker somehow posed an existential threat, is a reminder of how black people are viewed as inherently violent and dangerous. Historically, and in the present, this attitude has excused all form and manner of violence.

Black teens walking down the street can legitimately be shot dead, because as Fox News notes they have a “street attitude." Rodney King, a man beaten and subdued by almost a dozen police officers, was viewed as somehow “threatening” to men armed with guns, batons, and tazers. Black young people who are walking while holding a puppy in their arms can be beaten and choked by police because of “dehumanizing stares”—apparently this is a superpower that only black people possess, along with the ability to transform candy, ice tea, and other harmless objects such as wallets, cell phones, and house keys into deadly weapons.

In trying to work through the legal puzzle that is George Zimmerman’s shooting of Trayvon Martin and the absurdity of what has come to be known as “Stand Your Ground” laws, basic questions about human nature have not been asked.

I will remedy that oversight.

Thus, my question. 

Is George Zimmerman evil?

This is not an appeal to religion and god. Nor, is this question about a red man with horns and a pitchfork who punishes sinners, or a some deity who sits up in the sky rendering judgment on people’s deeds be they good or bad.

The evil I speak of is the banality and mindlessness of taking another life without the thought of consequence or action. This evil is indifferent. This type of evil also imagines itself as the victim and the unfairly persecuted.

For example, in Errol Morris’ TV series "First Person", he interviews the world famous forensic psychologist Dr. Michael Stone.

There, Dr. Stone describes evil-doers in the following way: "The interesting thing about evil is that those who commit it do not often think of it as evil...other people think of it as evil." 

The valorizing of George Zimmerman by the Right-wing media and its public, and how he seems to be genuinely surprised at the consequences of vigilante murder, would seem to fit Dr. Stone’s observation quite well.

Philosophical and moral questions of what constitutes good and evil are necessarily complex, nuanced, complicated, difficult, and provocative. This should not prevent us from trying to develop criteria for deciding if a person, from a clinical perspective, is evil.

As a helpful aid, Dr. Stone has developed a scale he describes as "The Gradations of Evil" that lists in ascending order 22 degrees and types of evil.

His scale includes two measures which I suggest are apt descriptions for George Zimmerman on the night he killed Trayvon Martin.

Number 4 "includes those who have killed in self-defense, but had been extremely provocative toward the victim for that to happen."

This result would make George Zimmerman an "impulsive murderer" on Dr. Stone's scale.

Number 12 are “power-hungry psychopaths who kill when they are ‘cornered.’”

This result would make George Zimmerman a "semi-psychopath" on Dr. Stone's scale.

The courts are not in the practical business of arbitrating if a person is evil or not. However, this does not mean that George Zimmerman is spared that description or title.

Some jurors may also be asking themselves if George Zimmerman is evil as they come to a conclusion regarding his guilt or innocence.

George Zimmerman may in fact be evil; he may also be “innocent” in the eyes of the law.

The American people should be prepared for such an outcome. 

Are You Ready for the Return of "The Tingler?"

This is a priceless movie clip. 3D remains popular. Smellovision is likely making its return as well. I would not be surprised if the tingler is not far behind.

I am very excited about the new Superman movie. Would I want electrical shocks going up my butt and spine when he unleashed his heat rays? I think not.

What is your version of the tingler? What makes you yell in fright? Are you feeling every sensation? Don't be afraid to scream!

I learned about Vincent Price and the tingler from Roger Ebert's interview with Howard Stern.

And I still cannot believe that Roger is gone.

While not including the "tingler", this clip of Siskel and Ebert's visit to Howard Stern is mighty entertaining:

The tingler is my distraction of the week. What is yours?

Black Nihilism Continued: Vice Visits "Chiraq" and the Ghetto Youthocracy Continues to Kill With Reckless Abandon

146 people have been killed in Chicago this year.

Thus, one more entry in the Black Nihilism series. I do hope that we can one day stop talking about such matters. Such a moment is far in the future.

The most recent episode of HBO's news-documentary series Vice focused on Chicago's gang violence. Apparently, Chicago has now been rechristened "Chiraq" by the gangs and those others who suffer from them as human collateral damage.

The day-to-day reality of Chiraq also echoes the findings of social scientists Sudhir Venkatesh and Steven Levitt who determined that being a street level drug dealer in Chicago during the height of the crack epidemic was more dangerous than being a soldier during the second Iraq invasion and occupation.

The indifference to human life on display in Vice's story on Chicago's gang violence is a function of many factors.

These include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. The drug trade;
2. The ready availability of guns;
3. A ghetto youthocracy where responsible elders and other parental figures are absent;
4. Broken homes and broken families;
5. Alternative social norms where murder, gun play, and going to jail are rites of passage;
6. Hyper-masculinity that is defined by violence and other negative social behavior(s);
7. Failed social institutions;
8. Limited life worlds where individuals find themselves normalized to violence, street culture, and death;
9. Poverty and unemployment;
10. An internalization of self-hatred that views the lives of other people of color as being less than human, meaningless, and uniquely suited for targets of violence and black on black crime.

Vice's story on Chicago's epidemic of street violence is solid. It is no "Interrupters". Vice does not reach for such heights.

However, Vice does an excellent job of highlighting how gentrification, Section 8 programs, and "urban renewal" took a more localized problem and spread it citywide like a virus, disease, or ant hill of pathology kicked over by an indifferent elephant.

As I have suggested earlier, Section 8 is a prime example of a public policy where good intentions have gone horribly wrong.

My claim is simple: Section 8 has helped to transplant what were local problems to other areas, rewarded absentee landlords, and hurt working class and lower middle class communities.

The solution to poor housing is that there should be fair housing for all people, anti-discrimination laws should be properly enforced, and that a living wage should be the law of the land. Vouchers are not a viable solution to the problem of inadequate housing for the poor.

Transplanting the ghetto underclass to healthy, functioning communities, is not a solution to the social ills of poverty and the truncated life trajectories among the poor. In all, programs such as Section 8--when abused--further disadvantage neighborhoods where upwardly mobile and dreaming strivers (and the politics of respectability) have a slippery and tenuous hold on life success.

I often wonder what would happen if the public policy experts, those others who advocated for the laws that created Chicago's gang problem, and then helped to spread it to other communities, had to live in the neighborhoods negatively impacted by their decisions.

Social distance creates indifference. Maybe social intimacy could create enlightened policy?

What do the Palmer Raids and the Church Committee Tell Us About the NSA and Project PRISM?

According to a new Pew survey, a majority of the American people apparently support the violation of their privacy rights by the National Security Administration.

As we discussed earlier, this is a function of exhaustion--what I like to call the "so what, I can't do anything about it effect"--as well as socialization by the media and elites that such violations are acceptable because the bogeyman of terrorism must be stopped at any cost.

The National Security State's partnership with Hollywood has also helped to "educate" the American people about how "cool" it is that "their" government has such fantastic capabilities.

From the relationship, movies such as Zero Dark Thirty and Enemy of the State are produced, movies which are nothing if not advertisements for American Empire turned both outward against "terrorists" and inward against the citizens of this country.

Ultimately, the National Security Administration and the Surveillance Society are facts of life that have been with us for decades. The public's acceptance of this reality is not wise; however, it is understandable.

Operation PRISM is part of a long history of spying on the American people by their own government. The public may not have read books such as Body of Secrets or know about the Palmer Raids. The public may consider the endless list of alphabet soup names for spy programs such as Cointelpro, Echelon, Typewriter, Shamrock, Minaret, or Rex 84 confusing and tedious. This same public may also find such code names exciting and titillating as they evoke images of James Bond and Jason Bourne.

As street griots are fond of saying, "there ain't nothing new in the game." During the 1970s, the Congress convened a hearing on the law breaking excesses of the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The Church Committee's findings are an eerie foreshadowing of what has come to light about the NSA and Operation PRISM.

And just as most Americans have little to no specific memory of the Church Committee, this most recent non-scandal about the NSA will be soon forgotten.

Edward Snowden likely has a movie, some books, and probably a video game on the way immortalizing his brave deeds. The National Security Administration's violation of the American people's rights are now part of mass popular culture. Therefore, as popular culture the memory of such misdeeds are forgettable and ephemeral. There is no public outrage because the "crime" is poised to be lost to the memory well and the collective political ether.

PRISM and Altruism: Is Edward Snowden Too Perfect a Hero and Public Servant?

I know I am not the only person thinking the following thoughts.

Edward Snowden will be vetted. His background and motivations for leaking information about the National Security Administration's (NSA) spying on the American people will be much discussed by the media. Ultimately, the man Edward Snowden should matter less than the facts and information he shared. We do not live in a perfect world. As such, the messenger will be scrutinized at least as much as the policies he chose to bring out of the shadows and into the public light.

Edward Snowden could be a serial killing child molesting animal abuser. I could care less. PRISM is bigger than any personal failings of the messenger. Yet, I do have some questions and curiosities about Edward Snowden.

I will share my own priors: I like my heroes to be a bit dirty and imperfect. To point. Brother Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a plagiarist and a womanizer. He is still someone I greatly admire. Other great men were petty tyrants, egomaniacs, or addicted to drugs and alcohol. This makes them all the more human and their achievements even more grand--at least to me.

In all, I prefer human heroes as opposed to those who exist on Mount Olympus too far away to touch, feel, relate to, and understand. Other folks may make different choices, that too is good.

According to published reports (that should be much interrogated) Edward Snowden was a mid tier computer tech working for the National Security Administration via a contractor. He also left high school to earn a GED. Edward Snowden washed out of the military before accomplishing his dream of joining The United States Army Special Forces. Despite these stumbles, he was trusted with a security clearance and a job where he earned at least 200,000 dollars a year.

Why did Edward Snowden walk away from such a good deal? Was he motivated "just" by patriotism and a belief in the Common Good and the Public Interest? I do hope so. But, I/we must/should entertain other possibilities.

Did Edward Snowden tell the media about PRISM and the NSA's domestic spying programs because of a movie or a book deal? Was Edward Snowden offered other inducements?

I am cynical. I am also guided by Occam's razor. If Edward Snowden went public because he realized that he was safer on TV than in the shadows, thus making it harder for the United States government to kill him, such a move would make sense to me. If Edward Snowden was motivated by a grievance against a superior, and he had to move first or be made into a scapegoat for offenses far worse than PRISM, the calculation to go public is also a sound one.

To my eyes, money and promises of future riches and fame cohere as incentives for throwing away a good career and a sound pension plan for a 200k a year earner with a GED.

Trading a life, one's safety, and financial security in the service of altruism?

I need to be convinced.

Whatever Edward Snowden's motivations were, he did the right thing. Edward Snowden is a patriot even if his motives may not have been pure...but then again, whose are?

Parsing Out the Puzzle That is a Black President, Partisanship, Authoritarianism, PRISM, and the NSA

The Newtown massacre generated a week or so worth of attention which then quickly dissipated. The national conversation on guns as a public health problem--one that kills many more people than "terrorism"--was pushed aside by the national media and a cowardly political leadership class who are beholden to the NRA and the gun lobby.

The "news" that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying on the American people for (at least) several years will be met with a similar outcome. Why? Many people have always assumed they were being spied upon. Thus, PRISM is not a revelation.

Many Americans are also not interested in politics or public policy matters. They have been lulled into complicity; others are just tired and exhausted by a broken economy and satiated by a celebrity-reality TV show culture which distracts the viewers by feeding ephemeral hopes of fame and stardom that will never personally come to them.

In total, the NRA-PRISM story is not a "scandal" because there is no surprise or finding that works to undermine the public's trust in the United States government because such a sentiment has already been evaporating.

And as inverted totalitarianism in the United States inches closer through the machinations of the Surveillance Society, neoliberalism, and "the culture of cruelty", there are Americans who likely welcome being spied upon by their own government.

Such violations make them feel safe: they are Pavlov's dogs, habituated to the Panopticon's eye. The common refrain of authoritarians and their defenders that "you have nothing to be afraid of if you are not doing anything wrong" still has life if the comment sections online, as well as the utterances on Twitter, are taken as an informal barometer of the public mood.

What of the politically engaged? How are they responding to the reveal that the National Security Administration has been systematically spying on the citizens of the United States?
 
Political ideology and partisanship are useful metrics for trying to figure out this puzzle (even one that is still in its developing and early stages).

One should except that principled civil libertarians on either side of the political divide should be outraged by confirmation that PRISM and other such domestic spying programs exist.

Political partisanship is a lens that colors how people respond to political issues and controversies.

Here, Democratic supporters of Obama ought to be more likely to support these policies because of an attachment to, and like of, The President. Although programs such as PRISM began under Bush, Republicans will negatively respond to this "scandal" because of a deep dislike and near pathological hatred of Barack Obama.

The power of partisanship to shape voters' attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions is well-documented. For example, research has demonstrated how voters will support a policy in the abstract (e.g. healthcare reform) and then when President Obama is mentioned relative to it, conservatives (especially those who score highest on measures of racial resentment) will then reject the same issue.

The Authoritarians pose an interesting puzzle. They are generally subservient and deferent to Authority and the State. Authoritarian-conservatives are also easily primed by fear: see the power of "terrorism" as a word that resonates among the Right-wing American public. Consequently, if considered in the abstract, authoritarians should support Obama and the NSA's domestic spying.

The fact that Barack Obama is the United States' first black president poses a challenge for this conclusion.

The authoritarians are also fearful of change, highly attune to a sense of external threat, and driven by a desire to maintain relative social dominance and privilege. Moreover, racism and conservatism are intimates in post civil rights America. Authoritarians tend to be more racist and hostile to members of any type of "out-group" as well as those marked as "dangerous" or "deviant."

Consequently, racism, conservatism, and authoritarianism--to the degree they can be neatly separated from one another--combine to create rage toward Barack Obama and his administration by those on the Right. 

Conservative authoritarians want to support the military, the NSA, and any other government or societal apparatus they associate with "safety and security." However, their sense of social dominance means that they will oppose the black guy who is President and any of his policies.

A highly polarized political environment where authoritarianism is overwhelmingly a feature common to Republican-Tea Party voters also means that they will show less trust in political institutions, and respect for the legitimacy of public offices. This dynamic is demonstrated by the use of violent language and threats of civil war, secession, and nullification by conservatives in the Age of Obama.

But, the authoritarians love of "country" and conformity demands that Joseph Snowden, the brave whistleblower who outed PRISM and the NSA's violation of the American people's privacy rights, be punished as a "traitor."

Do help me work through this puzzle. How do things look from where you are sitting and the circles you travel in?