2029 Snitch in Time

I read an article the other day that reminded me of how unfair the real world is.

The article was about the difficult time Edward Snowden is having finding a place to claim political asylum. Like Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, no country wants to appear to condone an individual who leaks country's secrets.

Yet every country wants to hear that another country's secrets have been leaked.

It's what I call the tattletale syndrome, or a snitch in time saves mine. Everybody hates a tattletale. But everybody wants the wrongdoer who's being tattled on to suffer before he wrongdoes them.

The article was actually about German Chancellor Angela Merkel complaining loudly about how the USA and the NSA were spying on them by monitoring their emails and phone calls. She was outraged. She took umbrage. She was in a veritable fahrvergnugen of a high snititude.

But strangely, neither she nor other spied-upon European leaders rewarded Edward Snowden for the great service he had done for them by offering him asylum. They wanted the USA to know they were mad but they didn't want the US to get too mad at them in return.

And they sure as heck didn't trust Edward Snowden. He was a whistleblower, which is an attempt to put a nice word on the act, but not much.

Look how our language really tells what we think about whistleblowers. Synonyms include: snitch, tattletale, stool pigeon, stoolie, informer, betrayer, scandalmonger, narc, squealer, rat, fink, and ratfink.

So Snowden ratted on the NSA for spying on our citizens. And the only place who'll give him asylum is Russia. They never spy on theirs...

The real world? My mom used to spank my brother when I told her he'd hit me. Then she'd spank me for being a tattletale. 

America, ya gotta love it.