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By David Sirota<\/p>\n
Whether in celebrity culture or in our Facebook-mediated interactions, we live in the age of the human being as a public brand. So there\u2019s nothing surprising about the reaction to this week\u2019s disclosures about the National Security Agency\u2019s unprecedented surveillance program. In our cult-of-personality society, that reaction has been predictably\u2013and unfortunately\u2013focused less on the agency\u2019s possible crimes against the entire country than on Edward Snowden, the government contractor who disclosed the wrongdoing. <\/p>\n
Almost universally, the government officials, pundits and reporters who comprise Permanent Washington have derided Snowden and those who helped him disseminate his disclosures. For instance, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., bashed him for committing \u201ctreason\u201d while Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., called for the arrest and prosecution of the journalists who broke the NSA snooping story. Likewise, establishment pundits from CNN\u2019s Jeffrey Toobin to the New York Times David Brooks loyally defended government\u2019s national security agencies by respectively assaulting Snowden as a \u201cnarcissist\u201d and a loser who \u201ccould not successfully work his way through the institution of high school.\u201d Meanwhile, plenty of Obama loyalists\u2013many of whom criticized the Bush administration for much less invasive surveillance\u2013took to Twitter to berate Snowden as an attention-seeking traitor.<\/p>\n
Though they failed to show that Snowden\u2019s disclosures endanger national security, these attacks do tell an important story\u2013not about the whistleblower, but about America.<\/p>\n
First and foremost, the backlash reveals that Permanent Washington doesn\u2019t work for We the People\u2013it works to protect itself. We know this because whereas Snowden is vilified for disclosing information that\u2019s inconvenient to Permanent Washington, those who leak classified information that is advantageous to Permanent Washington are left alone. <\/p>\n
Yes\u2013most of those slamming Snowden expressed no outrage when the White House recently leaked Obama-glorifying information about the president\u2019s assassinations of alleged terrorists. Same thing when it came to John Brennan. As Reuters\u2019 Jack Shafer notes, after the president\u2019s counterterrorism adviser leaked administration-defending information about a terrorist attack, \u201cinstead of being prosecuted for leaking sensitive, classified intelligence, Brennan was promoted to director of the CIA\u201d\u2013and few of those now complaining about Snowden expressed any outrage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe willingness of the government to punish leakers is inversely proportional to the leakers\u2019 rank and status, which is bad news for someone so lacking in those attributes as Edward Snowden,\u201d Shafer correctly concludes. <\/p>\n
Of course, Permanent Washington\u2019s self-interested assaults on Snowden will inevitably find some support among the general public. The question is: why? <\/p>\n
This gets to the second way that this week\u2019s events expose far more ugly truths about us than about Snowden.<\/p>\n
In a democratic society, as Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald put it, \u201cwe\u2019re supposed to know virtually everything about what (government officials) do: That\u2019s why they\u2019re called public servants.\u201d That\u2019s why, until given reason not to, we should naturally sympathize with\u2013and support protections for\u2013whistleblowers like Snowden. <\/p>\n
But that\u2019s the thing: Our core notions about transparency and self-governance have been under withering assault by Permanent Washington. Over time, that assault has succeeded in convincing many Americans to embrace the authoritarian view that says whistleblowers are a bigger problem than the government crimes they expose.<\/p>\n
To understand what\u2019s wrong with that attitude, consider the critics through the prism of history. <\/p>\n
Those castigating Snowden probably would have insisted that the biggest crime of the Vietnam War was Daniel Ellsberg publishing the Pentagon Papers. They likely would have also said that the biggest crime of Watergate was Deep Throat blowing the whistle. <\/p>\n
It is the same authoritarian argument against Snowden today\u2013and until we wake up to the real agenda at work, Permanent Washington will continue undermining civil liberties and America\u2019s democratic ideals in any way it can.<\/p>\n
David Sirota is the best-selling author of the books \u201cHostile Takeover,\u201d \u201cThe Uprising\u201d and \u201cBack to Our Future.\u201d Email him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.
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