Conflictions: Feelings About Manning, Snowden...Ellsberg…Myself

I find myself sad over Edward Snowden getting (temporary) asylum in Russia.  A large part of me wanted him extradited to the U.S. for trial.  It seems ironic he should be living now in Russia—a Russia which has turned increasingly authoritarian and non-democratic under Vladimir Putin; who has sent a member of the band Pussy Riot to prison, along with a leading opposition figure; and is now planning to enforce strict anti-gay legislation; not to mention Russian human rights abuse in Chechnya (I’ll deal with U.S. issues by and by).

Yet many people are happy that Russia has taken Snowden in (for now).  I ask myself where my own feelings come from.  I’ve always been a fairly “liberal” kind of guy, right?  I’m old enough to remember the Pentagon Papers case—the papers leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, published by the New York Times and later by Beacon Press (part of the Unitarian Universalist Association to which I now belong).  I was pleased when The Papers were published…wasn’t I?  In college I attended at least one anti-Vietnam War demonstration and worked on behalf of the election of George McGovern and the impeachment of Richard Nixon.

Perhaps, having since then been involved in running organizations, I understand how messy things get when people don’t “follow the rules”—and so I’ve perhaps become more understanding of organizations—governments included; more understanding than I used to be.  Or maybe I’ve simply become my father!

Yes and no.  I’m certainly not my father, although I do appreciate the resemblances more and more as time goes on; but I have a better relationship with my wife than my father had with my mother.  I do not feel the blind rage that my father felt:  Against Communists, against blacks—and perhaps against my mother.

Still, I grew up in a conflicted, contradictory environment:  During the sixteen years from the age of six to the age of twenty-two, I spent ten years living on U.S. military bases; another two living just outside of one, and another two spending my weekends and summers with my parents on one.  I spent five years living overseas.  Yet we were not a military family; my father merely worked for the American Red Cross in support of the military.

My mother was Lutheran; we attended a generic Protestant church service at military chapels.  These services were designed to exclude anything that might offend any specific Protestant denomination.

My father didn’t discuss religion.  I suspect he was either a Buddhist (perhaps becoming one while in Japan) or a Transcendentalist-sort of Pantheist—not the best means to reconcile him to my mother.

I grew up during the great Civil Rights Era of the late 1950s-early 1960s.  That’s probably how I became a liberal.  I eventually became an agnostic, yet I long held to my Protestant Christian base—and to the idea that America had saved the world in World War II and had been defending and promoting Freedom ever since.

So I’m conflicted about Manning (is it true that he may be transgender?) and Snowden.  But—don’t I care if the U. S. government committed war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq?  Don’t I care if the NSA has grossly violated the rights of U. S. Citizens?  Don’t I care if the United States has let down its own citizens and much of the world?

Yes.  I do.  But Manning’s and Snowden’s actions still bother me.  And maybe that’s right:  The government actions should bother me; but the actions of Manning and Snowden should too.