Newsbot
12-05-2010, 03:20 AM
I realize I'm going to get a lot of flack for this but after a conversation with my very liberal father last night I think my enthusiasm and respect for what Wikileaks has done is fading. Here's why:
As some of us are willing to accept, politics is a complicated and slow game. We try to elect politicians that we trust and respect like Barack Obama. We give them an amazingly difficult job to do and inevitably they end up in situations in which they have to make bad decisions because there simply aren't any good ones. It's easy for us as inexperienced spectators to say "Well why didn't you just do this? Why didn't you just close Guantanamo? Why didn't you just prosecute Bush and Cheney for war crimes or why didn't you get a backbone and stand up to the Republicans on health care?" But the reality is that these issues are vastly more complicated than we could possibly understand as people who have never been in that type of leadership role. We elect people who are more experienced with these things than us because it is impossible for those who haven't studied politics to see the bigger picture and fully understand and weigh the repercussions of these decisions.
The natural argument against that is obviously, well that's why we need to know more information. But I think we're giving ourselves a little too much credit for being able to truly piece together this information. Certainly we needed to know the truth about the Iraq war, about torture and true corruption. But I ask, what have the recently leaked documents told us about that? What revelations did they bring besides things we already pretty much knew? More importantly, what information did they expose that was unnecessary for us to know?
I think many would agree that in world politics certain information has to stay at the top not just for national security reasons but because as I said before the general public is simply not qualified to disseminate it.
What the leaks have done is put our government in a truly awful diplomatic situation. If we thought foreign relations were tricky before in many places they will be nearly impossible to rectify now. And for what? A little gossip that exposed that at the top people are still just people who gossip? How does this help us? More importantly what are the consequences of this damaged diplomacy? Do we truly understand the significance of our ability to find cooperation in the global community? Do we truly understand the United States importance as a moderator in world conflict? How will our damaged credibility affect our ability to work for peace in foreign regions of the world?
I certainly feel that our media needs to do a much better job of keeping us informed. It's an understatement to say that they dropped the ball during the Bush leadership. But these leaked documents did not serve to make us more informed individuals capable of making better choices in who we elect. If anything they've drawn our attention away from the real issues and further confused our understanding of the political process.
Symbolically the leaks seem noble and I honestly do not know what Jullian Assange and his team's intention and beliefs were when they decided to release them. But there is a responsible way to blow whistles and there is a time and place for it. I would certainly argue that Ellsberg releasing the Pentagon Papers was such and that we needed someone like him during the recent mideastern wars. What Wikileaks did was not that however. No matter how much they believed what they were doing was right they have caused significant damage that in my opinion does not outweigh the supposed transparency it brought.
I speak to you as a student of political advocacy. I am just as frustrated as the next person with the seemingly ineffective US government. But I also recognize progress that the Obama administration has made and try my best to put it into historical context while understanding that making policy never has or will be easy nor will it happen overnight. Often times I am disheartened by the knee jerk reactions to politics that happen on reddit, that seems to occur with little debate and spread until we become just as extreme as the extremism we claim to detest.
I hope that rather than downvoting my opposing opinion, people will use this as a place to truly think about and articulate why they agree or disagree with me. I am certainly open to the suggestion that perhaps I'm missing something. I just ask that people think before they jump on one bandwagon of thought. We know it happens too often on reddit and we're better than that.
EDIT: I'd like to mention that within 30 seconds of posting this I've been downvoted twice. That's no where near enough time to read my argument.
EDIT 2: D: dowNside
EDIT 3: Wow, I'm truly impressed with the response here and people's willingness to support political discourse over their own personal opinions on the topic. I've noticed a couple themes in the responses that I wanted to address. First the top comment suggests that I'm looking at this too much as an American issue. I see now that it did sound that way however my motives come from my fear of the damage these leaks could do to other parts of the world primarily. While right now they may seem harmless, there very well may a butterfly effect that occurs from some of the damaged diplomacy. Things that we can't necessarily measure but will in fact be a result of people not talking to each other over this. Like many others I was initially pleased to see the US government take some heat. They do need to be kept in check and reminded that they cannot get away with as much as they thought. I don't believe however that that embarrassment outweighs the consequences of the leaks.
Secondly, and although these are the minority, I am getting a lot of scary responses from people completely unwilling to look at this as an issue up for debate. One user said something like "if you are against wikileaks you are not a true patriot". This is exactly the type of extremism I was referring too. One of the keystones of Liberalism is a view that the world is not black and white. Too often we claim to be open minded yet we subscribe to the same self serving dogma that our opposition does. These "if you are against this you hate America" arguments are not just conservative they are fascist and many atrocities have happened under their premise. Most issues do not just have two sides but multiple. How can we find the best solution to problems if we close ourselves off to any that we do not immediately understand or see for that matter?
With that said I wanted to mention again how pleased I am that this made it to the front page. I never thought it would get off the ground but it's a testament to reddit's true colors. Thank you all for considering another view point and in some cases questioning what you believe. It's a more difficult and rarer thing than I think we realize.
submitted by madelinecn (http://www.reddit.com/user/madelinecn) to reddit.com (http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/)
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As some of us are willing to accept, politics is a complicated and slow game. We try to elect politicians that we trust and respect like Barack Obama. We give them an amazingly difficult job to do and inevitably they end up in situations in which they have to make bad decisions because there simply aren't any good ones. It's easy for us as inexperienced spectators to say "Well why didn't you just do this? Why didn't you just close Guantanamo? Why didn't you just prosecute Bush and Cheney for war crimes or why didn't you get a backbone and stand up to the Republicans on health care?" But the reality is that these issues are vastly more complicated than we could possibly understand as people who have never been in that type of leadership role. We elect people who are more experienced with these things than us because it is impossible for those who haven't studied politics to see the bigger picture and fully understand and weigh the repercussions of these decisions.
The natural argument against that is obviously, well that's why we need to know more information. But I think we're giving ourselves a little too much credit for being able to truly piece together this information. Certainly we needed to know the truth about the Iraq war, about torture and true corruption. But I ask, what have the recently leaked documents told us about that? What revelations did they bring besides things we already pretty much knew? More importantly, what information did they expose that was unnecessary for us to know?
I think many would agree that in world politics certain information has to stay at the top not just for national security reasons but because as I said before the general public is simply not qualified to disseminate it.
What the leaks have done is put our government in a truly awful diplomatic situation. If we thought foreign relations were tricky before in many places they will be nearly impossible to rectify now. And for what? A little gossip that exposed that at the top people are still just people who gossip? How does this help us? More importantly what are the consequences of this damaged diplomacy? Do we truly understand the significance of our ability to find cooperation in the global community? Do we truly understand the United States importance as a moderator in world conflict? How will our damaged credibility affect our ability to work for peace in foreign regions of the world?
I certainly feel that our media needs to do a much better job of keeping us informed. It's an understatement to say that they dropped the ball during the Bush leadership. But these leaked documents did not serve to make us more informed individuals capable of making better choices in who we elect. If anything they've drawn our attention away from the real issues and further confused our understanding of the political process.
Symbolically the leaks seem noble and I honestly do not know what Jullian Assange and his team's intention and beliefs were when they decided to release them. But there is a responsible way to blow whistles and there is a time and place for it. I would certainly argue that Ellsberg releasing the Pentagon Papers was such and that we needed someone like him during the recent mideastern wars. What Wikileaks did was not that however. No matter how much they believed what they were doing was right they have caused significant damage that in my opinion does not outweigh the supposed transparency it brought.
I speak to you as a student of political advocacy. I am just as frustrated as the next person with the seemingly ineffective US government. But I also recognize progress that the Obama administration has made and try my best to put it into historical context while understanding that making policy never has or will be easy nor will it happen overnight. Often times I am disheartened by the knee jerk reactions to politics that happen on reddit, that seems to occur with little debate and spread until we become just as extreme as the extremism we claim to detest.
I hope that rather than downvoting my opposing opinion, people will use this as a place to truly think about and articulate why they agree or disagree with me. I am certainly open to the suggestion that perhaps I'm missing something. I just ask that people think before they jump on one bandwagon of thought. We know it happens too often on reddit and we're better than that.
EDIT: I'd like to mention that within 30 seconds of posting this I've been downvoted twice. That's no where near enough time to read my argument.
EDIT 2: D: dowNside
EDIT 3: Wow, I'm truly impressed with the response here and people's willingness to support political discourse over their own personal opinions on the topic. I've noticed a couple themes in the responses that I wanted to address. First the top comment suggests that I'm looking at this too much as an American issue. I see now that it did sound that way however my motives come from my fear of the damage these leaks could do to other parts of the world primarily. While right now they may seem harmless, there very well may a butterfly effect that occurs from some of the damaged diplomacy. Things that we can't necessarily measure but will in fact be a result of people not talking to each other over this. Like many others I was initially pleased to see the US government take some heat. They do need to be kept in check and reminded that they cannot get away with as much as they thought. I don't believe however that that embarrassment outweighs the consequences of the leaks.
Secondly, and although these are the minority, I am getting a lot of scary responses from people completely unwilling to look at this as an issue up for debate. One user said something like "if you are against wikileaks you are not a true patriot". This is exactly the type of extremism I was referring too. One of the keystones of Liberalism is a view that the world is not black and white. Too often we claim to be open minded yet we subscribe to the same self serving dogma that our opposition does. These "if you are against this you hate America" arguments are not just conservative they are fascist and many atrocities have happened under their premise. Most issues do not just have two sides but multiple. How can we find the best solution to problems if we close ourselves off to any that we do not immediately understand or see for that matter?
With that said I wanted to mention again how pleased I am that this made it to the front page. I never thought it would get off the ground but it's a testament to reddit's true colors. Thank you all for considering another view point and in some cases questioning what you believe. It's a more difficult and rarer thing than I think we realize.
submitted by madelinecn (http://www.reddit.com/user/madelinecn) to reddit.com (http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/)
[link] (http://www.reddit.com/comments/eg7l4/i_think_the_hive_mind_has_made_us_blind_to_the/) [1366 comments] (http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/eg7l4/i_think_the_hive_mind_has_made_us_blind_to_the/)
More... (http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/eg7l4/i_think_the_hive_mind_has_made_us_blind_to_the/)