SNOWDEN, OBAMA AND OLIVER STONE.

   

I would like the reader to think carefully about the above title for this article; none of the names is that of a right winger and yet; when you watch the whole movie a sense of helplessness remains in the viewer. 

What we know about Ed Snowden is what Mr Stone has decided to unveil about the controversial individual. According to Stone, Snowden is the classic case of the usual average right tilted ignorant American who needs the love of a liberal activist to wake up. In Oliver's world one is born a stupid conservative who won't question the power's judgement and drifts farther and farther away from the dark cave as life hits him or her with the real facts.

Contrary to some, I try not to mix professional skills and political views; I believe Stone is a dictator lover and left wing lunatic, but at the same time a fine film maker. His attempt at personalizing Snowden, whether we accept his version of facts or not, is artistically and psychologically plausible. He does a decent job and for the first time I was forced think that after all, the traitor, which Snowden undoubtedly is, may have undergone a process of radicalization in light of the negligence, the immobility and the useless waste that our government performs every year pushing the agenda of the industrial military complex not necessarily to the advantage of we the people.

But we have whistle blowers like James and Joanne Moriarty from Texas  who have seen their bank accounts seized; their earnings garnished and their lives destroyed but to my knowledge have never given their information to the enemy. To me, Snowden is a traitor who belongs in jail as well as the many liars in our government who once and again testify under oath that we are not being surveilled when we now know we all are FISA or no FISA.

What stroke me most about the movie is the naive hope and high expectations Snowden and his girlfriend place on Barrack Obama's election only to realize that the government under his watch kept spying on us; actually, according the Stone's script Snowden discovers at some point that our security agencies surveilled more Americans than Russians. Had the movie been shot by one of Bill O'Reilly's filmmakers that would have seemed normal; but it was the one and only Oliver Stone to claim that nothing changed under the former president. I'm afraid Stone will be disowned by the left or maybe suffer an untimely accident.

And this reasoning leads us to where we are now; and I reiterate once again that if Trump conspired with the Russians in any way he must pay for it. But I also reiterate that to use the power of the American government to spy, request the unmasking and/or leak the names of American citizens is a flagrant violation of our Constitution and our way of life. If the left does not accept the theory of the movie it has to reconcile with how Mr Stone accuses them directly of lying; if they do not, instead, destroy the filmmaker nor hurriedly find lawsuits for sexual harassment against him; then they must accept that as Snowden claims, Clapper lied his butt out when he testified UNDER OATH that Americans were not being surveilled.

In closing, I don't think the problem here is whether Clapper, Comey or any bureaucrat lies (which is already a tragedy in itself) but the political manipulation of it all and the one sided version both parties feed us banking on our short memory and inability to make a simple analysis.