Billions of us, from prime ministers to hackers, are watching a live
espionage movie in which
you are the protagonist and perhaps the
sacrifice. Your way forward is clear to no one, least of all, I’m sure,
you.
I fear for you; I think of you with a heavy heart. I imagine hiding
you like Anne Frank. I imagine Hollywood movie magic in which a young
lookalike would swap places with you and let you flee to safety -- if
there is any safety in this world of extreme rendition and extrajudicial
execution by the government that you and I were born under and that
you, until recently, served. I fear you may pay, if not with your death,
with your life -- with a life that can have no conventional outcome
anytime soon, if ever. “Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped,” you
told us, and they are trying to stop you instead.
I am moved by your choice of our future over yours, the world over
yourself. You know what few do nowadays: that the self is not the same
as self-interest. You are someone who is smart enough, idealistic
enough, bold enough to know that living with yourself in a system of
utter corruption would destroy that self as an ideal, as something worth
being. Doing what you’ve done, on the other hand, would give you a
self you could live with, even if it gave you nowhere to live or no
life. Which is to say, you have become a hero.
