64% of Americans under 45 call Snowden a “whistleblower”

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 1 Comment
Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who helped the government read your email and then betrayed us all by telling you

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who helped the government read your email and then betrayed us all by telling you about it

Here’s a fun quote from former UN ambassador John Bolton about why Edward Snowden is a traitor:

[Snowden] thinks he’s smarter and has a higher morality than the rest of us…that he can see clearer than the other 299,999,999 of us, and therefore he can do what he wants. I say that is the worst form of treason.

Guided by individual conscience? Singing the song of yourself? That’s not what America is about. America is about playing on the team. You’ll have plenty of time to worry about whether you participated in an immoral conspiracy in the moments before death. On an unrelated note, 64% of Americans under age 45 regard Snowden as a whistleblower, compared to only 50% aged 45 to 64 and 40% of those aged 65+. Totalizing theories after the jump.

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On resenting the homeless

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 7 Comments
Kitty Meow, née Robert Brewer, of Caras Park since July. Photo by Kurt Wilson of the Missoulian.

Kitty Meow, née Robert Brewer, of Caras Park since July. Photo by Kurt Wilson of the Missoulian.

It is fashionable in Missoula at this moment to blame every petty nuisance on the Rainbow Gathering. That annual conflation of freedom and self-indulgence met near Dillon, Montana earlier this summer, and much of the overflow has lived in Missoula ever since. Specifically, they live in Caras Park and outside the grocery store. The sight of a dozen twentysomethings lying in the park drinking beer every day should not bother me, just as being asked for money whenever I buy milk is not really an inconvenience. All I need to do is ignore it. Yet somehow, I am bugged.

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The best paragraph in this NYT story about baby naming

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 6 Comments
Probably Aiden or maybe Oliver prays for the relief of Asperger's Syndrome.

Probably Aiden—maybe Liam—prays for the relief that is Asperger’s Syndrome.

Alex Williams has written this New York Times “First Person” feature about his struggle to find the perfect name for his baby. Williams uses an inoffensively deft touch to address an issue freighted with self-importance, which is more than can be said for a lot of the people he quotes. He’s in the style section, so a certain level of absurd conceit is inevitable. For example:

Looking beyond the Top 1000 [baby names] was not enough for Jenn Lewis-Gordon, a waitress in Lakewood, N.J. She and her husband crossed off any name that had been used more than 100 times in the entire country in the last year. This left “Ptolemy,” “Bombay,” “Thursday” and “Ocean,” as well as “Atlas,” their ultimate choice. “I feel as though he’ll be less likely to be a follower if he starts out from the beginning being different,” Ms. Lewis-Gordon, 35, explained.

Ladies and gentlemen, the modern condition.

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Down in Kentucky, where we’re from

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 1 Comment

kentucky-fatal-shootings-kyjpg-2503028df251b5bf_large

Last week, Kristian Sparks, age 5, shot and killed his two year-old sister Caroline with a rifle that had been given to him by his parents. The gun, a .22 marketed for children as My First Rifle, was kept loaded and standing in a corner of the Sparks home. Burkesville, Kentucky is the town where all this responsible behavior took place, and according to the Times, the people who live there don’t want to be seen as a symbol of America’s gun culture. A family friend says that “pointing fingers doesn’t really accomplish anything.” Three mourners at Caroline’s funeral attacked reporters across the street. And there’s this quote from county coroner Gary White:

Down in Kentucky where we’re from, you know, guns are passed down from generation to generation. You start at a young age with guns for hunting and everything.

That’s kind of a weird thing to say while standing in Kentucky.

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Someone please explain why that happened

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 0 Comment
Two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon yesterday.

Two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon yesterday.

My first thought when I woke up this morning was that I would find out who bombed the Boston Marathon, and maybe why. As of this writing, no explanation is available. From a practical standpoint, that should not bother me so much; it pales in comparison to knowing that, say, an eight year-old boy was among those killed, or that several people who had just finished running 26 miles suddenly had their legs blown off. That is catastrophe, right there. It is disaster, in the same sense as a tornado or an earthquake, which also happened yesterday. The difference is that in nature, a bunch of screws and BB’s and nitrates do not spontaneously fly together and make a bomb. Somebody had to do that, and I would like to know who it was so that this disaster can become a tragedy.

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