You can see this with Nobel prize winners, rich tycoons, great writers, and so forth.
Often in mathematics, a thing is not named after the person who discovered it. I think that mathematicians as a joke even made a theorem about this and then didn't name it after the guy who pointed it out.
With Snowden, I think it was more the fact that he was the whistleblower. You could argue that he just did it for this reason or that reason. But he is now the vessel for that point in history.
Haven't read the book. This is from when the story started breaking.
According to accounts he had a hardcover constitution at his desk. He used it to back up his arguments but again 'who cares nerd, get back to your work'.
Other things that pop to my mind was that he was given some super high clearance so he could do favors for his boss (doing their job) as they were too lazy. And of course no one cared then, nor they cared afterwards.
Reading about this whole story popped my bubble of ignorance how government agencies are run. They are run same as any big corporation, run by career BSers often lazy and incompetent. But they are protected by same type of people (naturally).
That's pretty much it. The first time I really understood Snowden was when he was on the Joe Rogan podcast (think of JRE what you will...). It really drove home the point of the profanity* of evil. Just people going about their daily business, not thinking too much about it.
*this doesn't seem to be the correct word here. If you're a native english speaker please tell me what's the right phrase to use here
We are but vessels for our claim to fame.
You can see this with Nobel prize winners, rich tycoons, great writers, and so forth.
Often in mathematics, a thing is not named after the person who discovered it. I think that mathematicians as a joke even made a theorem about this and then didn't name it after the guy who pointed it out.
With Snowden, I think it was more the fact that he was the whistleblower. You could argue that he just did it for this reason or that reason. But he is now the vessel for that point in history.