While
this practiced, self-serving obfuscation may indeed make us pause and ponder on
the wisdom of whistleblowing Edward Snowden, I do wonder where the irony is. It
could be entirely logical, at least in terms of internal consistency.
Of
all generations, we are surely the most familiar with internal logic. We flick
from narrative to narrative, blithely accepting the oft-conflicting conventions
of one with another. One moment we’re treading the Weatherfield cobbles, happily
accepting that posh-ish middle-aged spinsters frequent an inner-city local, the
next we’re pressing the spacebar in Arkham
Asylum and grimly bataranging Killer Croc.
We
inhabit a world of multiple, serried realities, indulged with a variety of
compliance, cynicism and temporary abandon. Aside from our top-level reality of
the rent, the nine-to-five and travel connections, we subscribe to sundry
auxiliary actualities, all designed to make the day disappear by baby steps.
Historically, it has been ever thus – campfire heroics, first editions and prestidigitation have all intermittently beguiled
the ancestors.
Today, I would suggest, we are unique in the
multiplicity, duration and immersion offered by our otherworlds of choice. While
our forefathers may have sustained a seven-day snapshot of just what prevented
Flash Gordon Conquering the Universe in any given week or had a lingering,
instalment-spanning recall of the progress of Roadsweeper Jo’s consumption, we
have to sustain an array of continuities, with new ones ever-jostling for
admission.
From DVD-box-set mid-marathons, soap operas
(domestic and transatlantic), multi-digit (and multi-incarnation) film
franchises, novels, biographies, video games, sports fixtures, the
vicariously-lived love lives of starlets and canteen colleagues, the musical careers
of chord-striking concert stars and the world-narrative of tectonic events to more
home-spun fictions, those designed for your mini-me to mull or to maintain the
trust of your misguided Mrs, we live a life steeped in a veritable Venn diagram
of unevenly shared realities.
Thankfully, these narrative strands seldom collide;
content to sit in separate cerebral shoeboxes until required. While they may
occasionally overlap – comparing Homeland plot exigencies down the Rugby Club –
they, by and large, lead independent lives. Even a brief interleafing of
Reality Prime, though, can prove somewhat disconcerting – meeting a Manchester
chum in Hong Kong bar or spotting a Facebook Friend on an alien Timeline.
How then should our whistleblowing Hawaiian resolve
his own supposedly collapsing realities? Why would he choose to flee the land
of the free after digging his own grave in the home of the brave? Was it too
much for him to suddenly discover that Uncle Sham had independently declared
open season on online privacy? Was it a Mavis-Riley-Meets-A-Dalek moment, with
the internal consistencies of his all-American world view suddenly undermined
by their internal contradictions? That Tekken glitch that catapults you living
room-wards sans dhoti?
It’s a nice idea, but not one that bears much
examination. This was not some recidivist member of the Famous Five, weaned on
hampers, cycling proficiency and voluntary admissions of LBW. This was a
29-year-old intelligence officer earning, allegedly, US$200,000 a year – in a
country where the median wage is still around US$50,000.
The frequency with
which his earnings are cited should be enough to arouse suspicion. It was a
figure bandied around online by both Snowden and his on/off poll dancer girlfriend.
Hardly the most covert of financial operations – you don’t, after all, read of
James Bond boasting about the extent of his licensed OOverdraft.
Snowden turned to security work after failing in his
bid to join the Special Forces, a sort of USAS, apparently breaking both of his
legs in a training accident. It is an interesting choice of early career for a
man who latterly decides himself a champion of individual freedoms.
This was not, then, man who stumbled upon a dark
secret and found himself obliged to turn rogue. This was a man who watched too
many movies, a man whose own internal narrative became corrupted by
cross-contamination from his Bourne DVDs.
Casting himself as The Geek Who Saved The World, Hong
Kong was a logical – rather than ironic – choice for him to seek sanctuary.
Having already outflanked Assange – partly by being more personable and a bit less
rapey – he now has his sights on being the anti-Chen Guangcheng (the blind Chinese
activist who sought sanctuary in the US Embassy in Beijing just over a year
ago).
Every
story needs a sequel. And one with ever-higher stakes. The follow-up to Raiders of the Lost Ark was hardly going to be Indy and the Stubborn
Trouser Crease, now was it?
If
Act One sees you defy the Oval Office and flee the FBI, then why not become a global
water-cooler icon, the sand in the Vaseline of the world’s two mightiest
ideological and economic opponents? Now there’s an Act Two.
Hong
Kong, then, was a logical choice for a man with an eye on the on-going
narrative. Mainland China would have been a still better bet, but – Mittycisms
aside – the boy is still an American and wouldn’t want to risk the plumbing.
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