Partisan morons.

It must be partially due to the fact that I have lived in France for 2 years straight, and I was quite removed from the day-in-day-out Dems vs. GOP media narrative.  Sure, I still read the NYT regularly, but every time I walked outside or turned on the TV or the radio I was treated to a much different media environment.  By comparison the Democrats are actually "The Right" and the Republicans are "The Extreme Right."

But my usual weary bemusement of those who fervently attend the pep-rallies for the Blue Team or the Red Team has turned into disgust, particularly given the popular response to Edward Snowden's truly heroic actions last week. 

If you carefully read the articles published in the Guardian (and to a lesser exent the NYT) and your first response was to defend President Obama, you have a serious problem.  If the first thing you share on Facebook is something meme-ish from "LOLGOP" saying that "GOP furious about security leaks, unless it's the identity of a spy whose husband proved W lied us into war... do you remember the Valerie Plame ACTUAL scandal! Not a peep from our conservative friends," I just... I don't know what to say.  So the Plame affair was an "ACTUAL" scandal but this isn't? Everything isn't a puerile competition!

And why, O why, would anyone feel so compelled to go to any length to defend a man who is rightly deemed the most powerful on Earth?  How ironic that these poor partisan hacks feel the need to defend someone, when they should instead be defending themselves against him! 

Now I know that the invasion of privacy in the US has been a long, systematic process that Obama himself did not cause.  But he occupies the Executive right now, and he must bear all of the responsibilities of this highest of functions.  He is the figure that gets all the praise when things go well, and also gets all the criticism when they don't. That's what being the President is all about.  I really hoped that this would be obvious to more of my internet acquaintances. 

Let's get over the "us" versus "them" mentality.  Isn't that what Obama preached?  This isn't about partisan bullshit.  This is about the government collecting all of our data, and then retroactively being able to do what it pleases in a completely opaque environment.  A 29-year-old contractor had it all at his fingertips!  This is about thinking long and hard about the consequences for all of us if this practice is allowed to continue to expand.