If you haven’t read the entire linked Newsweek article, you should. I still don’t think we know, or fully, understand the damage Snowden has done to both the US and intl relations. It’s no wonder to me that he chose to first flee to China, then was taken in by Russia. He wasn’t quite 30 when he committed his crimes, and in many respects, he reminds me of the principals in the Red Army Faction, without the direct violence, but with the same narcissism and twisted ideology.

Last night, I watched Der Baader Meinhof Komplex that Dr. Lizard had recommended, on Netflix. While doing so, a young work mate of my g-son’s came in, dreadlocks flying, and asked me what the movie was about. “Privileged white motherfuckers who thought they were revolutionaries in Germany”, I replied. He started laughing and said, “I love you, Granny, you get right to the point,”

But it’s true, as I see it. Those “revolutionaries” were never personally discriminated against, had never suffered anything other than the usual life and death consequences of every other human being, but still thought they could lead a “revolution” by riffing off the real issues confronting those whose causes they embraced. And they engaged in ordinary criminal activities, including murder, to get themselves and their ideology noticed. They gave lip service to their “collective” but it was mainly a group of immature egos fighting for dominance, which is always the case when change is not a grass roots phenomenon and “revolution” dwells only in the fevered minds of the privileged who have no real idea of what oppression is and don’t really understand how it affects the lives of those who suffer it. I think the scenes from the group’s visit to the Fatah training camp was a clear example of this—they considered themselves on the same level with Fatah (who appeared to despise them as being debauched, undisciplined and disrespectful) and having the same connection with the Soviet Union, China and other countries providing Fatah weapons—and they were in over their heads by thinking that learning weaponry and “guerrilla warfare” would make them “revolutionaries”.

In my most political days, I was familiar with these types and could not understand why they would throw away what I had worked hard to try to attain, even giving up their children, and go along with others who cared nothing for their personal existence but only what they offered to a personalized ideology that could actually commit murder and mayhem against innocent people to achieve an aim. I saw more than a few people I thought were anti-social personalities who really didn’t care about changing minds, as long as their own personal issues were satisfied.

Ulrike Meinhof herself said,

“Protest is when I say this does not please me.
“Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more.”

All about me, in the end, and the philosophy of a 2 yr old expressed in adult philosophical terminology still makes it the philosophy of a 2 yr old.