According To YouGov Poll, Snowden Support Declining Among Americans 658
eldavojohn writes "A recent poll from the YouGov consisting of one thousand responses shows that Snowden's support among Americans has shifted. Now, according to the poll, more Americans think he did the wrong thing rather than the right thing when asked: 'Based on what you've heard, do think Snowden's leak of top-secret information about government surveillance programs to the media was the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do?' The results and breakdown are available online (PDF). Without getting into racial or political breakdowns, the results now show that 38% say he did the wrong thing, 33% say he did the right thing and 29% remain undecided about the results of his actions. Instead of charging the populace into action Snowden may be facing apathy at best and public disapproval at worst."
hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
How about support for prosecuting James Clapper?
Re:Maybe (Score:5, Interesting)
That's exactly the kind of psy-op that has been going on for weeks now in discussion forums all around the internets.
Slowly, but steadily comments pop up that put Snowden in a slightly bad light, for no good reason at all. Depending on the target audience of the forum, it's anything from "because 'MURICA" to what you just said.
Doesn't anyone notice that?
That's also why such programs are so enormously dangerous. Who in the world would know best how to manipulate public opinion? Only those whose sole reason of existance it is to peek into other peoples lives ... so even when the programs are known (which happens very rarely), we can't fight it because they have already become too powerful.
Re:Terrible news... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hell, most people aren't even willing to see a 1% increase in their taxes in order to fix this nation's problems. Do you really think that anyone is going to risk their job or their life to do the same?
Gonna Have to Disagree with You There (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow does this headline have things reversed.
Edward Snowden has been subjected to a month long attack campaign. This started with go after his girlfriend for being a pole dancer. It followed with other negative news stories and criticism by major politicians. From there there was a federal espionage indictment. He then had to flee the country and the USA has gone to extraordinary lengths putting pressure on countries to isolate him. The media has been mainly complicit. And after all that is approval rating has dropped a mere 5 points.
That's the story.
Submitter here and I'm afraid I'm going to have to outright disagree with you. I just don't see your events lining up with this recent drop in support. You're talking about months old efforts to discredit him that seemed to have little effect on his popularity. If you read the HuffPo article you'll see:
Much of the drop in support for Snowden's actions since the earlier poll appears to have taken place among Republicans, who were divided, 37 percent to 37 percent, on whether Snowden did the right thing in the previous poll, but in the latest poll said by a 44 percent to 29 percent margin that he did the wrong thing.
As fallout from his revelations ruin our foreign relations [washingtonpost.com] I think you'll see a lot of conservatives switch positions. This is simply a more plausible explanation. US as a power player in world politics and economics is simply higher on some people's agendas then their own damned privacy.
Re:Maybe (Score:5, Interesting)
That's exactly the kind of psy-op that has been going on for weeks now in discussion forums all around the internets.
It is standard propaganda tactics to describe people as unreliable attention whores to place blame on them. It works in various ways.
For example, take the fable "the boy who cried wolf". It is not a tale about a boy lying, but a tale about blaming a boy for the failure of others to build fences to protect the sheep.
Re:Terrible news... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hello, Bob. I'm going to call you Bob. You work for the CIA as part of an organised disinfo op. You might not even know that. You've been hired as a contractor for "information management" or "brand management" or whatever banal words they put on it this time. But even if you don't know, you know, because who the fuck else thinks anyone in their right mind would do something like this for the attention?
You are a tiny part of what is wrong with America. And I'm not even American. Ask your bosses, they know. That's part of the problem. When they say it's damaging your country's national security, they're talking bullshit, but when they say it's damaging your country's national interest, actually they're being accurate. You have the largest covert surveillance and propaganda machine in the world, one that puts Iran and China to shame: and you're part of it, sitting there, at that keyboard, typing what you've been told.
If you know something is wrong, the public have a moral right to know. Edward Snowden is braver than you. Bradley Manning is braver than you. Julian Assange is braver than you. Each of them no longer have their liberty in any normal way, but each of them have advanced humanity in an important way and done what they feel it right: but you, Bob? You're a fucking keyboard warrior fighting on the front lines of the opinions of the American people. Fuck you. Seriously, go fuck yourself.
Re:Maybe (Score:5, Interesting)
A fervent defense of Apathy (Score:5, Interesting)
Nonsense.
Zealots, psychotics, and sociopaths that have nothing to live for are willing to "give their lives for what they believe in". The simple willingness to die for a cause bears NO weight on the moral quality of the cause, nor on the worthiness of the person.
History is littered with nutballs who are willing to give their lives for 'a cause'. Unfortunately, they usually convince others to join them, and invariably some non-nutballs die too.
I know it's all charmingly enthusiastic and romantic to be zealous about a cause but personally I commend American apathy. As we've recently been witness to (repeatedly) the world is FULL of people who are so partisan they are willing to DIE for their local interpretation of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Is that commendable?
We rightly mock the Byzantines for the Nika riots (in which tens of thousands of people were slain in street violence over the span of a week, largely over which color team they supported). We stand aghast at today's news about a Brazilian referee stabbing a player because he wouldn't leave the pitch (and then the crowd QUARTERED him and left his head on a stake in the center of the pitch). They certainly "cared" a lot about something, so much so that they were willing as a consensual group to murder a man. Shall we canonize them for their dedication to their beliefs?
America has been accurately characterized as the 'lifeboat from history'. America is where a Jew and an Arab can live next to each other in peace, not brainwashed from birth to destroy each other because of some argument between scruffy goat-herders hundreds of years ago. America is where a Catholic girl can marry a Muslim guy simply because they love each other, and not be bred into fervent hatred because of the faiths of their families. The ESSENCE of this is - dare I say it - an apathy to the fervently-held beliefs and concepts that their parents and homelands were willing to die and kill for.
Partisans of both extremes like to mock what they call the 'apathetic' center, mainly because we won't (whether the reason is intellectual or mere laziness) join their crazy-train of vituperation, spitting at the "other guys" simply because they're "not us".
Well, I'm sorry - I refuse to buy your motivational screed that I "must" care about this or that. I refuse to give a shit about whatever happens to get you all riled up, simply because you're agitated. I'll cheerfully go about my life, earn a living, and celebrate my "apathy" because that's one of the things that make this country great.
I'd stake my life on it.
Weasely "interpretation" of Constitution (Score:5, Interesting)
You Americans deserve what you're about to get.
What they're about to get is nothing to celebrate, and should motivate one towards resisting the trend. The rest of the world either will get the same shortly thereafter, or is getting it already. The difficulty is that a group of persons must interpret the limits expounded in their constitution, and are not doing so well at it. One is reminded of the comparable commands in Orwell's Animal Farm, and their weasely reinterpretation:
And so forth...
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is a good reason that the system is an unnecessary failure. It's like having the a strong password and then writing it on a post-it note that you stick to your monitor.
I'm pretty sure that "support for Snowden" and "acceptance of the police state" are two very separate things. One can think Snowden is a twerp while still thinking the government has exceeded its authority to a dangerous extent.
I realize that this does not fit the narrative that this press release and all the other breathless celebrity press releases about Snowden being a jerk to his ex-girlfriend are trying to advance, but it does appear that some Americans can walk and chew gum at the same time.
You took a big jump there, bucko. Remember, most of the coverage of Snowden has been about his personal life, his having dropped out of community college, etc. I'm not sure that a growing number of people see him as a traitor.
People may be ambiguous about Snowden, but make no mistake, people are not so ambiguous about having Fourth Amendment rights. They are not so ambiguous about privacy and definitely not ambiguous about a government that seriously needs to be whacked on the nose with a rolled up newspaper for crapping on the carpet.
Re:hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
That's the bad thing about it, if push comes to shove, the decent, honest and good people have the lowest survival chance. They're not as adapt at weaseling out and usually rather reluctant to climb over a mountain of corpses to save their ass.
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, pretty much agree with this part, I mean, they wrote books on this very subject. Hell, they even wrote about the tyranny of a two party system. Kind of hard not to agree, IMO.
However, you lost me at the next part, when you started employing leaps of unfounded nonsensical logic.
So, you're saying that the MAJORITY is unproductive, and they're STEALING from the PRODUCTIVE MINORITY? What the fuck are you talking about fool? Tell me, how are those "minority" so fucking productive? Signing the articles of incorporation and moving 1's and 0's between two points isn't fucking productive you moron. Who is being productive here are the workers that allow the business to make money. Nowhere is this more evident than in small businesses. I know, I've owned small businesses, starting with next to ZERO dollars, doing all the work myself.
When I was the Majority of my labor, I was most productive. When I hired on some help, I managed contracts and filed taxes, did office work for half the time. I relied on my laborers to do the productive work. That desk work is necessary red-tape, but it's far from fucking productive. Wheeling and dealing clients to get more jobs is necessary, but you're a fucking idiot if you think it's more productive that the people doing the labor to fill those contracts.
Government handouts aren't the fucking problem. They're a small slice of the fuck-up pie. What about the trillions of dollars in war spending? What about the government sanctioned monopolies in telecom sectors? What about the rich businesses getting away with a "Double Irish" [wikipedia.org] -- A legal form of tax evasion? What about paying high ranking members of companies in stock options to avoid taxes? That's all legal, but it's plain an simple bullshit, and shouldn't be legal by any rational stretch of the word.
At the end of the day the rich minority are to blame for the majority of the problems, not the gheto hoochie slummers. I've lived in a ghetto. This opinion piece you linked to is more sensationalist Kool-Aid made to appease the rich minority into thinking their continued exploitation of the majority is warranted. The majority of folks in the dregs of society are just trying to make ends meat. My next door neighbor operated a fork-lift in a 110 degree warehouse 10 hours a day, and could only afford the same shitty housing project apartment that such welfare mommas do. His fiancé's wall-mart job payed shit, they purposefully cut hours to c
Re:hmmm (Score:0, Interesting)
First of all the disparity in wealth is lowest in history today given the fact that 300,000,000 Chinese are now urban dwellers with businesses and jobs, that was probably the biggest single act of wealth creation and distribution in history, totally thanks to the capital that entered the system when it started running away from the socialism of the post-productive Western societies.
Secondly the rule of law was first broken by the politicians with the explicit and the implicit support by the mob, when the politicians declared that the Constitution is a living, breathing document.
That was it, that was the moment that they both: broke their oath to defend and protect the Constitution and they used that to break the law.
Democracies fail because they descend (this time I meant to say descend) into authoritarianism and totalitarianism after they go through a phase of eating through the savings accumulated by the society during its productive phase (USA being a free republic with almost no government to speak of).
Re:Weasely "interpretation" of Constitution (Score:4, Interesting)
"Odd, ain't it? How the US resemble more and more the Stasi after the Stasi is no longer..."
That better?
Seriously folks. Look at the previous posts of "Cold Fjord" and see for yourselves--this "man" is a government shill, a "forum breaker".
Re:Weasely "interpretation" of Constitution (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at the previous posts of "Cold Fjord" and see for yourselves--this "man" is a government shill, a "forum breaker".
For some interesting parallels, compare his posts to the techniques outlined in the document linked in my signature.
Re:A fervent defense of Apathy (Score:4, Interesting)
A truly interesting point of view. There's a lot to think about there, even if I am a little vague what the "it" is on which you would stake your life.
I have a bad feeling about your point that (forgive my perhaps presumptuous rephrasing) the sheep can live with the lion in the US because of widespread apathy; of lack of widespread blazing dedication to principles (good or bad). It appears to me that it is an unstable situation. As more and more lions are constantly perversely imported and cloned, their native fierceness will assert itself (and is asserting itself) more and more, while sheep by definition never can learn to defend themselves, and the apathetic prefer to keep their heads in the sand.
I admit the above is symbolic, and I would rather not give labels to the lions and lambs, but I am sure that i will not deliberately stake my life on a bunch of people who don't care much about any issues being able to hold the lions in check, even if the latter be still (but not necessarily always) a group more limited in numbers.
I would beg you to consider one thought, if no other. There are not "both extremes". There are a vast many extremes. It never did exactly fit the mold of dichotomy on any very consequential subject, but it is far less so now and getting even less so all the time. The complex of issues is a complex of many polychotomies - but not precisely polychotomies because these are static, and the shifting sands of blazing viewpoints are anything but static.
Consider that 911 truthers are composed on many who count themselves on the left, many on the right, and many who refuse the false left/right dichotomy. Many of them think the ufo disclosists are crazy; and many agree with them - and vice versa. There are those who see positives in both the tea party and the occupy wall streeters. There is an overlap between socialists and libertarians. The neo conservatives seem to have rejected conservative political beliefs (and may or may not retain conservative economic ideas).
Re:Weasely "interpretation" of Constitution (Score:5, Interesting)
The Soviet Union used horrible excesses in their attempt rectify centuries of gross economic inequality by trying to move economic power from the top to the bottom, and it was an utter, tragic failure. The private power structure of the US today is engaged in moving capital the other way-- to soak the lower and middle classes (until they're paupers) and move their assets back up to the top 400 families. What those venomous leaches want is for everyone to work at below minimum-wage jobs for their entire lives, always beholden to their employers (for both their paycheck and their health insurance), and for their communities to crumble to nothing-- cut off infrastructure, education, and relief and services for the poor. Detroit is, for the US elite, a success story. And they now own all three branches of the government, and even more importantly, they own the press.
It's fine to believe the excesses of the USSR are being repeated in the US, but it's misleading, and probably not useful to equate them. It just makes it harder to discern who the true enemy is.
Re:Weasely "interpretation" of Constitution (Score:5, Interesting)
I grew up in a country with a front row seat to the iron curtain. I've spent quite a bit of my time in the late 80s helping people get out. Apologies that I was a wee bit too young earlier to affect much.
I know what It was like. Funny enough, as crappy as it was, our western propaganda managed to paint it even blacker. We didn't have to add much, but we still did. Today, a lot of things surface that the average person didn't even know about, people who really had no reason to believe they were under surveillance discover that there are actually detailed files about them. And it comes to them as quite a shock.
But when you compare what they knew about their country and what we know about ours now, you can't help but to draw parallels. Of course it varied from country to country, and someone in, say, Azerbaijan certainly had a very different life from someone living in the GDR, just like today it is quite a bit of a difference whether you live in the US or in India. But if you compare their "first class" countries (i.e. pretty much any country with a first class view to the West) to ours (take the G7), the people aren't that much different off. As long as you keep your mouth shut and do your work, there's little you have to fear. Your opinion doesn't count, neither in politics nor in economy. You get to buy what is offered because nobody gives a crap what you actually WANT to buy. The main difference is maybe that here you can say whatever you want with impunity, at least as long as you don't have any kind of backup or power to put your money where your mouth is and actually cause some change. Then you're gone.
And whether you're labeled terrorist or counterrevolutionary when you disappear somewhere, do you really care anymore?