I haven’t seen any of Whitney Dow’s Whiteness Project videos. To be honest, I’m a little afraid. For one thing, I expect to feel a lot of pena ajena while watching them. But there’s also the fear that I will just embarrass myself. But I did read an excellent interview with him by Jenée Desmond-Harris.[1] But before facing the videos, I want to talk — in my overly analytical way — about what it means to me to be white. But I do think we have to be careful. The truth is that race is something that is outside of us. It is a concept. It is a way that we have of dividing up people into groups. And it is a function of our xenophobia. So it would be more correct to say that it is racism that is inside us and not race itself. On the other hand, our society is so defined by this concept of race that it is hard not to talk about it as if it were real. Ideas — even wrong ones — matter.

I self-identify as white. And what that means is that the society at large sees me as having no race. The way that society looks at race is the way the doctor looks at your chart. If you don’t have any diseases, you are healthy. In our society, if you don’t have any race, you are white. And that’s why the concept of race is so pernicious: it is thought of as a kind of contagion. This is why white supremacy is so caught up in issues having to do with purity. We see this in old terms like “quadroon” (one-quarter “black”) and “octoroon” (one-eighth “black”). The idea was to define the race of a person by the faction of “impurity.” White is pure and it is contaminated by racial impurity. The definition that these people have of the “white race” is “no race.”

This gets to the very heart of what it is to have white privilege. I have the incredible luxury of being treated by default as an individual. Yes, of course people make lots of assumptions about me. A glace is enough to tell, for example, that I’m a book worm. But if I were to go out and rob a bank, no one think, “A book worm robbed a bank!” And more to the point, no one would think, “A white guy robbed a bank!” It would just be “some guy.” People might decide that I was a “low life” or whatever. But no one would blame my actions on the white race. And that’s an amazing benefit that I get by being white.

Now look at this from the other side: it is just as good to be white. If I’m watching the local news and they report that a man robbed a bank, I don’t need to cringe when I see that the guy is white. So what? It doesn’t reflect badly on me! Because society has decided that he isn’t white. Rather, he is just another human being. And I can’t be held responsible for what some other human being does.

Other than this, I am as related to other whites as any given African American is to the African American community as a whole. And this is where it gets tricky. I’m hugely biased toward a particular cultural tradition of American whiteness — namely the liberal European tradition. I might spend much of my time complaining, but the truth is that I’m obsessed with Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and so on. And this makes me as white as the people who watch 19 Kids and Counting. Also that’s part of this blog and this article. Who the hell do I think I am? Actually, that’s a question some of my friends have asked me: why do I think that anyone cares what I have to say? But it generally doesn’t even occur to white men like me to ask the question. We see ourselves the way lords saw themselves in 18th century England.

At the same time, I have the most vulgar racist instincts. I’ve been very open about that while writing here. I fight it, and I think largely tame it, with my higher brain functions. But it’s there and it poisons me like a low-grade infection. And I’m not sure how it manifests. The truth is I see white people say really ignorant things about race that show clear blind spots. The most obvious is the claim, “I treat everyone equally!” Yeah, I don’t go around screaming racist epithets either, but I’m aware enough to realize that doesn’t prove anything. But by definition, I’m not aware enough to know the things I don’t realize. But even this understanding has at least a whiff of aristocracy to it — the great man trying to understand what the little men suffer.

Of course, my whiteness is geographically dependent. When I was a kid, my family went on one of those horrible car trips through Texas. At a diner in one town, two good ol’ boys had a very loud and threatening conversation with each other about the race of my father. They couldn’t decide if he was Mexican or Spanish. They eventually agreed that it didn’t matter. And then after we left, they followed the “colored” man with his white wife and mulatto kids to the county line. I wasn’t white that day and it had nothing to do with what was inside me.

But here in northern California? I’m as white as it gets — or at least well over whatever cutoff people determine for whiteness. And I’m very aware on a personal level how this benefits me. I see myself in very individualistic terms. I am, for want of a better term, a “curious fellow.” I go about my life as if I had no race. And I think that is, at rock bottom, what defines being white.

[1] That’s right: another Jenée Desmond-Harris article. What can I say? She’s really great, and I’m beginning to think that Vox is the best political website around. And yes, I think that is a pretty typical thing for a white guy to say.

Back on Monday, Matt Yglesias wrote an article that got a surprising amount of attention, American Democracy Is Doomed. It was based on the idea of Juan José Linz that presidential systems are inherently unstable. Linz argued that there is a tendency for them to turn into, well, exactly what we are seeing today in America. A good example is Mitch McConnell’s claim that the Republicans’ “top political priority… should be to deny President Obama a second term.” Check out the video of him saying it — he can hardly keep from laughing, he’s so pleased with himself.

I’ve lately heard “serious” political commentators claim that there was nothing wrong with saying that. It is what all political parties should do. I think it is important to note that this was said when the country was still in bad shape. What’s more, he and the rest of the Republicans had been acting that way from the very start when we were in crisis. I certainly think that that kind of behavior is understandable and expected. But not acceptable. The ultimate question for the Yglesias’ article, however, is whether it is inevitable.

Jonathan Chait wrote a response the next day, There’s a Chance American Democracy Is Not Doomed. That sounds like typical Chait snark, but based on the article, I would have to say that he means it literally. He’s arguing that we aren’t necessarily doomed, but most likely we are. This hardly makes me feel better. But let’s think about his argument.

Chait thinks that the problem is not the system but conservatives themselves. While I accept this, it doesn’t much help. If you look at the the following graph of filibuster use, you will notice something interesting:

The increased use of the filibuster was almost exclusively a Republican thing. But once the Republicans pushed up the rate of filibuster use, the Democrats followed along with it while they were in the minority. I expect that the Democrats will act the same way under the next Republican president as the Republicans did under Obama. So the Republicans manage to poison the entire political system. So I’m not too encouraged by the fact that it is primarily a Republican problem.

The ultimate American example of partisan dysfunction is the Civil War. Chait counters this idea by noting that the problem wasn’t what Linz described. I don’t think it much matters. We can expand the model. But I think it already is part of Linz’s model. The Civil War was not the result of a disagreement about slavery. Lincoln didn’t do anything about slavery — he only got elected. It was effectively just that the southern states had given up on democracy. I don’t see much difference between the way that the Democrats responded to the election of Lincoln and the way the Republicans responded to the election of Obama.

None of this means that the American system is doomed to fail. I happen to think that it is, but I’m not especially concerned about this mechanism. America is just well into its imperial phase and we are on the way out because we have too many vested interests with far too much power. The modern corporation doesn’t feel like it has to earn market share; it can just buy it through political means. But what’s going on with the Republican Party is quite frightening, and I can well imagine the US turning into a fascism long before our empire crumbles.

One thing is for certain. This argument of Chait’s will not save us:

This is a common fantasy of liberals. It is totally ahistorical. The definition of “white” is fluid. Once Italians were not considered white. Once Jews were not considered white. The Japanese may not be considered white today, but they aren’t used as an example of “those people” as they once were. Latinos may not be considered white, but certainly within two generations at the most, they will be. The conservative movement has always been great at slicing and dicing groups of people. It is more or less what their movement is all about. So increasing diversity will not save us from conservatives, because they will find a way to divide the people into the “deserving” and the “moochers.”

And in the end, Linz may well be right. There may be no way to limit this kind of racist power other than by allowing many political parties to flourish as they do under a parliamentary system.

Afterword

This has nothing to do with the rest of the article, but I thought it was funny. Chait wrote in his last paragraph, “It’s conceivable that the p.c. left, which refuses to recognize the legitimacy of opposing views, will one day take control of the Democratic Party (in which its influence remains marginal).” Still banging that drum! It’s also conceivable that the Marxist left will one day take control of the Democratic Party (in which its influence remains marginal). How ridiculous, Chait; let it go!

There is a common complaint among conservatives that African Americans should just “get over” slavery. In fact, I think that they have gotten over it. As Ta-Nehisi Coates has noted, systemic oppression of African Americans is much more recent than that, and it continues to this instant. What I think is that southern whites need to get over the Civil War. And the rest of us need to get over pandering to their hurt feelings over having lost their treasonous rebellion. I’ve discussed the issue a number of times. For example, No More Confederate General Bases! And, Southern Pride Rotting Our Republic.

With the fiftieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, we have yet another example of this problem. Edmund Pettus was not on the right side of history. He was a Confederate general in the Civil War — and very much in favor of slavery and the Confederate cause. And like almost all of those guys, after gleefully committing treason against his country, he was welcomed back by that very same country. He went back to the life he had before the war. And eventually made it into the United States Senate (when it was still a corrupt appointed gig). God bless the US, because if you are rich and white, it doesn’t matter what you do — they will treat you like a hero.

But the other notable thing about Pettus is that in 1877, he became Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama. And this was no secret. In fact, when the bridge was named after him in 1940, this was probably a selling point. It is part of that whole sick southern inferiority complex that claims that only things Confederate constitute the true soul of the south. And for 75 years, the name of a bigot and a traitor has been displayed proudly on that bridge. Perhaps it is time to change the name.

This morning, Jenée Desmond-Harris at Vox reported on a group of students who are trying to do just that, Inside the Fight to Strip a KKK Leader’s Name From Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge. It is about a Change.org petition, Remove Selma’s KKK Memorialization: Rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The message is clear, “It’s time for the state of Alabama, the city of Selma, and the National Park Service to remove a KKK leader’s name from the historic bridge.” Of course, this isn’t the first time such a request has been made and nothing has changed yet.

I think this really ought to be an issue for whites — but I say that as a white person. I know that power concedes nothing without a demand. But is there no shame among us? Must we be beaten over the head about every obvious offense? The name on that bridge should make every white person cringe. And trust me, I know what many people will say, “You want to hide our history!” But that’s not it at all. I am fine with our history — it is what it is. But I have a major problem with celebrating men of history like Edmund Pettus.

Indeed, Tony W Harris of the Alabama Department of Transportation made exactly the same “history” argument. And a white resident of Selma said, “I think it’s going to be more divisive than unifying.” But I think it is really just a matter of people accepting the fact of past wrongs. Bloody Sunday will always be associated with the Edmund Pettus Bridge. And changing the name of the bridge would be a nice continuation of that — an acknowledgement that treasonous KKK leaders are not people we honor.

Have you seen the great jobs report this month? The economy added 295,000 jobs. The unemployment rate went from 5.5% to 5.3%. Wow! Happy days are here again! There is literally a chicken in every pot. Unfortunately, most Americans lost their pots when the bank foreclosed on their houses. All right, maybe not. It isn’t a bad jobs report. It’s a mixed bag. That 295,000 number is impressive, but it is still less than the number of people who gave up looking for a job last month. And it is still true that we need a lot more months of job growth like this to get back to our pre-crash levels of employment.

Job reports these days are very much a double edge sword. We want to see good numbers — more job growth. But the better the numbers, the more it brings out all the austerity fools who claim that the Federal Reserve must raise interest rates because inflation is going to increase. This is said based entirely on theory. There is no indication that inflation is actually increasing. As I’ve noted many time before, the reasoning here is that it is better to deprive workers of jobs than to allow the rich to face even the threat of inflation.

So the lower the unemployment rate gets, the louder the screams from the finance types will be that the Fed must raise interest rates. But here’s the thing: the Federal Reserve has a 2% inflation target. I think this is too low. It is basically just something that Alan Greenspan pulled out of the air. And now it has become some kind of iron law of economics — which should tell you a lot about just how scientific economics is. But the target is 2%. The problem is that more and more it isn’t even a target — it is an upper bound. In a really good blog post yesterday morning, Paul Krugman cautioned the Fed:

He is making the case that inflation that is too low represents a much more serious threat to the economy than inflation that is too high. But it is pathetic that he has to remind these people of this. If the Fed’s target is 2%, then it should be above 2% about half the time. But that hasn’t been the case since 2009. And the power elite love this. It’s just a reflection of the fact that working people are doing really poorly. But the rich don’t care about that. Their piles of money are worth a lot and they want it to stay that way. Deflation would be even better for them.

This is the problem with an oligarchy. Our leaders are not, in general, doing what is best for the economy. Or at least, not what a reasonable person thinks is best for the economy. They’ve defined what is best for the economy as what is best for the rich. And so every month we have this fight about the jobs report. If it’s good, the rich tell us the Fed must do something because they will get very slightly less rich. And if it’s bad, well, it’s bad. Of course, even when it is bad there are some who argue for raising interest rates. Who cares if American workers have jobs? Have you seen the price of yachts recently?!

Dahlia Lithwick wrote a great overview of Wednesday’s King v Burwell hearing, High Drama for Obamacare at the High Court. She’s a very playful writer and it is well worth reading the whole thing. It is pretty much all that I know about the hearing. And I have to say, I don’t know why so many observers — including Lithwick herself — seem so reticent or even gloomy.

Chief Justice Roberts said almost nothing. That could be ominous, I suppose. But I think it just means that Roberts knows this is a highly contentious case and maybe in this case it is a good idea to keep a low profile. The bad reading, of course, is that if he were planning to find for the government, why not clearly signal it so that people wouldn’t be left in doubt for the next few months. But I don’t think that would be his thinking if he were concerned about his and the court’s reputation.

It certainly seems to be the case that Kennedy is siding with the government. He seemed to be following two different tracks that lead to a good outcome. The main one is the argument that if the law reads the way the plaintiffs want, that means that the federal government had excessive leverage over the states. Basically, it was saying, “Sign up for full Obamacare or we are going to destroy your state.” It’s an interesting argument, because the last time the Supreme Court waded into these waters, it decided that the states had the right to opt out of the Medicaid expansion. So Kennedy seems to be saying that since the Court decided that way, it has a kind of obligation to not cause the states any more harm.

The whole thing is an outrage, though. What the “liberals” on the court were saying made perfect sense. You really have to tie yourself in knots to find this challenge compelling. Check out this exchange the Lithwick recorded:

Michael Carvin is the plaintiff’s attorney. I suppose he had to answer that way, but it is ridiculous. I’d hate to be a lawyer that spends his whole life making stupid arguments all for the benefit of those who already have more money than God.

What Scalia and Alito had to say didn’t bother me all that much. Alone, I wouldn’t think it meant that they were necessarily going to vote against the government. But there was no real discussion of what was supposed to be the big issue: whether four words out of an enormous law could trump all the rest. Instead, it was more stuff like you might hear on a slightly elevated right wing talk radio station. And I think what it means is that in any clearly partisan case like this one, the evil trinity on the Supreme Court will always side with the conservatives. If Roe v Wade came before them, they wouldn’t look at the law; they would just know that they were going to overturn it because that’s the side they are one.

It’s all embarrassing. I just hope the rest of the world isn’t watching. But it is a perfect microcosm of American politics. The “left” is made up almost entirely of moderates — people slightly to the right of Richard Nixon. The “right” is just crazy. And the “center” is just a couple of justices we all hope will occasionally be reasonable. I think we are safe on this case. But we are looking at decades of bad times here in the United States.

Glenn Greenwald wrote a really informative article over at The Intercept on Wednesday, The “Snowden is Ready to Come Home!” Story: a Case Study in Typical Media Deceit. This is in reference to all the recent stories about how Snowden wants to come back to the United States and how he has lawyers working on the matter. As Greenwald documented in some detail, there is no story. It isn’t that Snowden doesn’t want to return and that he doesn’t have lawyers working on this. Rather, it is simply that Snowden has always wanted to return home and has had lawyers working on a deal pretty much from the start.

The problem that Snowden faces is that he’s been charged under the Espionage Act. This is the 1917 law that the Obama administration has used twice as many times as all other presidents before him. And I don’t think that they have ever used it appropriately. It is for this kind of crap and the general war on whistleblowers that Reporters Without Borders dropped the United States 13 places to 46th on its index of press freedom. Remember, there are not even 200 countries in the world. So this puts the United States outside the top 20% countries. How “exceptional” is that?

According to Greenwald:

From the beginning, Snowden has claimed that he would come back to the United States if he were given a fair trial. It’s sad that in my country, this is a request that has to be made. Of course, there are plenty of poor “nobodies” who are only too aware that a fair trial is just not something that our judicial system provides. But when it comes to stuff like the Espionage Act and government secrets generally, the government doesn’t even pretend to be just. Basically, if Snowden came back, his “fair” trial would consist of a jury passing judgment on him without his having presented any real evidence. Such a trial would be no better than the Soviet show trials of the 1930s.

Given that Greenwald documented many times when major media outlets had published stories and headlines about Snowden wanting to come back home, how is it that this recent brouhaha started? It is very simple. Snowden’s Russian lawyer just wrote a book. He held a press conference as part of the promotion for it. During the press conference, he was asked about Snowden and he said, “He has a desire to go back, and we are doing everything possible to make that happen.” It wasn’t meant to be news because it wasn’t:

The implication here is that Snowden must now regret what he did. Life is horrible in Russia and he wants to come home. Greenwald noted that Snowden is not at all unhappy in Russia where he has quite a good life where he’s able to work on the issues he’s always cared about. There is, of course, still this Cold War residual in America that Russia must be a terrible place to live. This is part of a larger American narrative that it would be terrible to live anywhere but America. This is generally most especially believed by people who live in awful places like Dallas.

So the story, such as it was, allowed the US media to create a false narrative where Snowden had turned against Russia and toward the the 46th best place for press freedom — also called the “land of the free.” (Fun fact: higher on press freedom is Romania.) Of course, this is all ridiculous anyway. As everyone should know, Snowden is only in Russia because the United States has done everything in its power to stop him from leaving. The Bolivian president’s plane was forced to land and searched because the American government thought that Snowden might be on board.

If Snowden ever makes a deal to come back to the United States, it will certainly not be under this administration. It isn’t that future administrations will be better about this stuff. History shows that they just get worse. But Snowden will always be an embarrassment to the Obama administration. So a Republican especially might have a reason to make an acceptable deal — something like they gave to David Petraeus. But it doesn’t sound like Snowden is in any rush. As it is, the United States seems to get worse every year. “Land of the free” is more and more a cruel joke.

Yesterday, Jenée Desmond-Harris at Vox wrote an excellent overview of the situation, The 6 Most Damning Findings From the DOJ’s Report on Racism in the City of Ferguson. I’m actually glad that we’ve gotten past discussion of Darren Wilson. There is no doubt in my mind that he, like more police officers than most Americans want to admit, is a villain who should never have been allowed to be a police officer. But I don’t think it is just to grab onto him as the ultimate problem. I’m sure that the Ferguson Police Department is filled with officers who would have behaved exactly the same way. So the focus is now where it should be — at least in one place.

The problem, of course, is that we are only looking at Ferguson because Michael Brown was gunned down by a pussy officer who clearly would have been better assigned to checking parking meters. How many other towns have similar problems? Well, certainly Ferguson seems to be an extreme example. Most towns don’t seem to be as bad. But it seems that this is a general problem. You may be aware of a cliche that security guards are particularly aggressive and unreasonable because of their inferiority complex with regard to not being “real” police officers. There is at least some truth to that. Well, I’ve begun to wonder if “real” police officers don’t suffer from something like this with regard to the military.

There was a lot of reporting regarding the militarization of local policing after 9/11. I don’t think the fact that they have tanks is the problem. But it feeds into a kind of fantasy world where the police are always under threat. It’s kind of like Bill O’Reilly claiming to be in war zones when he wasn’t. I’m sure in his mind, he was in war zones. And I’m sure that the police in Ferguson thought they were in a war zone. But there has always been an attitude in police forces that it is them against the rest of us. And clearly, when you have a large majority African American community policed by an overwhelmingly white police force, the situation is so much worse.

Ferguson Policing Was Racist

The specifics about what was (and I assume still is) going on are interesting. Let’s go through each of the six points. The first is, “In Ferguson, race had everything to do with who was stopped by police, and whom they used force against.” Much of the information here is probably stuff you’ve heard before, such as the fact that while 67% of the population was black, 85% of traffic stops were of African Americans. But a couple I hadn’t heard of, like the fact that every time a police dog bit someone, it was an African American. But this one really struck me:

This reminds me of how the police were known to cite and even arrest hippies in the 1960s for trivial things like spitting. It’s the same thing here. The police hated the hippies then and they hate the African American community now.

It Isn’t Because Blacks Commit More Crime

Just like with the huge discrepancy with cannabis charges between white and black, the report found that blacks were not committing more crime — at least not enough more to explain the racial citation and arrest differences. Here’s an example, “Between 2011 and 2013, African-American drivers got 72 percent of the speeding tickets when radars or laser verification were used, but when tickets were based on officers’ personal observations, they got 80 percent of the tickets.” Not that 72% is close enough to the 67% of the population — although still high. The 80% is not just a fluke.

Police and Municipal Figures Exchanged Racist Email

I guess this is the most salacious of the findings. German Lopez compiled, Here Are 7 Racist Jokes Ferguson Police and Court Officials Made Over Email. Check out this charmer:

In 2011, there was an email with President Obama depicted as a chimp. And as far as the investigators could determine, no one was ever even chastised about this. Indeed, many of these email messages were forwarded around the government employees.

Police Arrested People Trying to Help the Injured

This one shouldn’t surprise anyone. When Tamir Rice’s mother ran to him, the Cleveland police threatened to arrest her. In Ferguson, one of the examples involves a guy trying to help his bleeding girlfriend. Instead of helping the woman, the police arrested the man while they waited for an ambulance to arrive. It’s pretty clear that the general attitude is that the Ferguson police consider the community to be made up of a bunch of animals. They have it exactly backwards.

The Department Abused Its Power

This is what we see everywhere. Our constitutional rights really don’t mean anything when we are dealing with the police. If they ask to search you and you won’t let them, they will use this as probable cause and search your car. Or as in once case in Ferguson, just arrest you. Or check out this charming story that sums up a number of problems with the police force:

If you doubt that story for a moment, then you haven’t dealt much with the police. This is definitely not specific to Ferguson. The police believe they are above the law.

Follow the Money

As you probably have heard some reporting on before, the city basically used the poorest segment of their community to pay for the city functions via fines and other mechanisms. And this was not just something that happened. This was explicit policy. But what are you going to do? You can’t tax the rich!

This is not just about the death of one person. As Desmond-Harris noted, “Ferguson residents… saw Michael Brown’s death at the hands of Darren Wilson as just one example of the type of racially biased policing that made their city an unjust place for the 2/3 of its residents who are African-American and fueled their distrust of the police department.” Hopefully, this will improve things in Ferguson. But we have the same problems throughout the United States. And most people — white people — don’t want to admit that there is a problem. They just want to see it as this or that bad apple. No. The barrel is rotten and all the apples are poisoned.

John Adams once wrote, “A government of laws, and not of men.” That was what America was supposed to be. And I don’t mind it being aspirational. But it isn’t even that. It is just false. Take for example, David Petraeus. He’s the high level military and political hack who once had Washington swooning. But then he had an affair with his hagiographer. And then we found out that he gave her highly classified notebooks. One thing that’s clear about the whole thing is that Petraeus is not a whistleblower. He gave her the notebooks for his own personal gain — both in his sexual relationship and in getting out a book that painted him as a modern day Achilles.

Given that the Obama administration has been vicious in going after leakers, one would think that Petraeus would be deep trouble. After all, this administration sentences John Kiriakou to 30 months in jail for leaking one name (never published) to a reporter in his effort to get out the story of our torture program. Similarly, Stephen Kim got 13 months for discussing a classified report with a journalist. So what did the government do to the disgraced Petreus? Ten years? Twenty?! Well, no. Actually, he won’t spend a second in jail. He won’t even have a felony on his record:

Peter Maass at The Intercept reported, Petraeus Plea Deal Reveals Two-Tier Justice System for Leaks. He highlighted the difference in the way that top officials get off light. In some cases, like Alberto Gonzales, they get “admonished but not charged.” How Scooter Libby ever managed to get sentenced to any time is beyond me. Of course, his sentence was commuted, so he didn’t actually go to prison. The main thing is that “we” — the right kind of people — don’t go to prison. We only put the prols in cages!

It’s also the case that Petraeus is rich. He’s worth at least $2 million. But that rather small sum for the right kind of people, will expand now. He is a partner in a private equity firm. The power elite understand how leaking secrets is just one of those things that happens. The reporter is smoking hot and she’s willing to jump your sagging bag of bones. Who could resist that? Certainly not a “patriot” like David Petraeus.

Welcome to modern America. If you are poor — and especially if you’re black — just accept the fact that whether you live and die is a matter of dumb luck. If you are rich — if you have the right kind of friends — it doesn’t much matter what you do. Now that I mention it, Edward Snowden is crazy to consider coming back to the United States. If they gave John Kiriakou 30 months, Snowden is looking at something like the 35 years they gave Chelsea Manning. Snowden is very clearly not the “right” kind of leaker. Isn’t that obvious? He didn’t leak those documents to get laid or to puff up his already unbelievably puffed up reputation. What’s more, Snowden isn’t partner in a private equity firm. He’s the “wrong” kind of leaker. He’s screwed.