Its like Hillary walking into a working class kitchen for the first time.
They’ve been shielded from even critical support of China and other AES for so long they literally, not figuratively, literally cannot process that people exist that have beliefs that aren’t Reddit Approved. They immediately assume it’s bots or wumao. Human beings can’t possibly hold these beliefs, so they must be Oriental hordes or actual robots.
I know Edward Snowden is a libertarian or some dumb shit but man he really did get himself exiled for nothing.
“I assume that the enemies designated by my rulers are worse than my admittedly very wicked rulers, based entirely on testimony from those same wicked rulers.”
Snowden got citizenship in Russia for his entire family, a lot of money from authoring a book and other media deals, and worldwide fame as a hero
He may not have achieved his goal but his consolation prize is not bad
Yeah it’s certainly much better than for example, Assange, but it’s wild to me that people just gloss over the US surveillance state at this point