Putin, Assange, Gandhi and Snowden: the weird logic of civil disobedience

I will give you a riff -- a primer -- on the concept and practice of Civil Disobedience, a vital idea, especially in days of "resistance." So scroll down... but first a few links regarding our present crisis, viewing it from different angles than you'll get in the press. 

For starters, Rep. Adam Schiff tweeted: "The Mueller report includes the results of the criminal probe, but not the findings of the counterintelligence investigation." And Mueller Hints at a National-Security Nightmare. Yes, that shoe has to drop. But even bigger will be… money laundering.

Russian interference proved effective, and the GOP blocks doing anything about it. Do you need a better dictionary definition for treason? Several states are scratching for funds to replaced defective voting machines that cannot be audited and were produced by republican or even Kremlin-connected companies.

If the "good-guy billionaires" were serious about helping with this crisis, they would approach states like Pennsylvania and offer to pay for upgraded voting machines that give auditable paper receipts. Perhaps you will be repaid later, when the GOP cheating mafia is crushed. 

== Hatred of Smart People ==

Want to understand why the GOP pours poison at our intel/FBI/military officers and civil servants? Experts see two years of American political dysfunction as a win for Putin.

And what’s smellier? Whether or not it can ever be proved that the multiple horrifically suspicious multi-hour debriefings Donald Trump has held in secret with communist and “ex” communist dictators were actual agent-control sessions, the effects have been inarguable -- universal harm to our alliances, sciences, institutions, agencies, and every source of strength, public and private, as this article only begins to make clear.

… which has led a member of Trump’s transition team and a lifelong Republican political/legal advisor and professor at the Scalia Law School to say enough is enough.

 == Their best loved trick ==

Any person in the west who seeks a position of influence of any kind should read this article: “What to Do When the Russian Government Wants to Blackmail You — "Russian officials have a long history of using compromising material, or kompromat, as a weapon against political opponents.” They did it during the czarist Okrahna and all across the NKVD and KGB and some of the same guys are using the same tactics, today.

I’ve only been yammering about the likelihood of extensive blackmail in the west for 20 years. But this Atlantic piece offers case studies and practical advice what to do, if you find yourself a target. “The only way we can defend ourselves from dirty tricks is to go public,” he continued, “to beat the attackers.”

Oh, if only the compromised in Washington were to have such guts.

… which, strangely enough, circles around to …

== The essence of Civil Disobedience ==

Amid the tragicomedy of the expulsion of Julian Assange from his Ecuadorian bolt-hole,  this essay is erudite, offering interesting perspectives, while (alas) utterly missing the point about Assange's arrest and likely trial for hacking government computers. He will argue he's protected as a journalist, an absurd position that will only serve to dilute our consensus approval of journalistic sanctity. 

A vastly more pertinent defense is civil disobedience (CD). The essence of CD is much more than just raising a stink and nuisance, in order to call attention to injustice. The concept was well-explained by Thoreau and Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and utilized with effect by Daniel Ellsberg. As Edward Snowden has said repeatedly, the practitioner of civil disobedience expects -- and even wants -- some degree of sacrifice and punishment! 

Accepting that expectation demonstrates the protester's courage and maturity of purpose in overcoming a steep opportunity-slope: the deterrence of the law, even one that needs to be changed. A lawful society - by the way - that the CD practitioner honors by assuming it will be implemented with some proportionality. Gandhi and King could never have won in a genuinely murderous tyranny, and they said so. Their methods only work in a society wherein judges and the populace grasp the important concept of a sliding scale, and the fundamental notion that the law sometimes must change.

Such societies -- the 1947 British Raj or 1950s America -- resist the temptation to crush protest... not always successfully, but enough to validate the protestor's faith: that sincere willingness to endure moderate deterrence will be rewarded with... conversation. 

Alas, protestors in China and Hong Kong have learned how risky this can be, when these concepts aren't rooted in real tradition.

Indeed, the very notion of CD is now embedded in U.S. law. Protests that amplify from picketing - to sit-ins that inconvenience commerce - are mostly "honored" with a night in jail. (And those who whine about that do not understand civil disobedience an iota.) Throwing an egg is nasty, but doesn't ruin anyone's life (or month) so a monetary fine and three days jail might happen... though much less, if you convince a jury of your peers that the egging was deserved. And hold that thought about jury nullification.

Edward Snowden has repeatedly lectured on this, saying he expects punishment for his bona-fide crimes... "I just want a promise I won't be killed, then I'll come home to a public trial," he's said. (Note also, while there are aspects that intel folks are rightfully angry about, Snowden's crimes have already satisfied a criterion for CD -- they provoked substantial - if inadequate - reforms in the FISA Courts and other processes.)

In contrast, Julian Assange asserts total victimhood for his righteous actions against a nation (America at-large, not just its varying governments) that at-best lazily and at-worst nefariously concealed heinous actions from its people. An ironic stance, since most of the "heinous" stuff that he screams-at has been... well... disappointing from a thriller-writer's perspective. 

(Note, I wrote The Transparent Society: so I approve of - indeed agitate for (!) - increases in the general, worldwide flow of light! Heck, I cheered my head off, over the Panama Papers, which seemed almost a scene from my novel EARTH! The consortia of responsible journalists who handled that much-needed revelation were both professional and heroic. Alas, it is from that position as a transparency activist that I worry: Assange appears to have done more to poison transparency, than elevate it.)

But back to the core point. A jury trial in the U.S. will give Assange a powerful megaphone, far more vivid than the silly-ass bullhorn he used to drive his Ecuadorian hosts to the verge of diplomatically-immune murder. Let him face a jury and argue for those peers to nullify any Trumpian machinations!

Daniel Ellsberg eventually became a college professor and hero to waves of undergraduates. It's where I expect Snowden to wind up, after he negotiates a CD transition, through moderate punishment. But Assange? His alliance with Putin and Trump showed that this is not a fellow who calculates in the cause of reform. I don't know enough to fully judge, nor am I asked to. But "hero" is not on my list of leading terms for this very strange man.