How are "It could just be a challenge for them." or "They could just be 'blindly' patriotic" legitimate reasons? Of course everything has a reason, we live in a causal universe. Your comment implies someone claimed it's magic, and I for one haven't heard that yet. So you may call that rational or intelligent, but that doesn't make it so.
And then there's
> "It's entirely possible that there are some really horrific classified things that were stopped via similar spying activities, so intercepting some Gmail messages seems like a much less evil alternative."
"some Gmail messages"? How is this not belittling it? How is that, pardon my french, not a fucking joke to say at this stage to this audience?
And how is that list complete? Why does "sustaining power over domestic and foreign democratic interests" not show up in it? It's not reasoning to just throw out some things, two thirds of it being silly [in the context of legitimate reasons, which is what the post started out claiming to enumerate] and stopping with one nice thing that could be possible, while ignoring not so nice things that could also be possible. It's rationalization.
And then there's
> "It's entirely possible that there are some really horrific classified things that were stopped via similar spying activities, so intercepting some Gmail messages seems like a much less evil alternative."
"some Gmail messages"? How is this not belittling it? How is that, pardon my french, not a fucking joke to say at this stage to this audience?
And how is that list complete? Why does "sustaining power over domestic and foreign democratic interests" not show up in it? It's not reasoning to just throw out some things, two thirds of it being silly [in the context of legitimate reasons, which is what the post started out claiming to enumerate] and stopping with one nice thing that could be possible, while ignoring not so nice things that could also be possible. It's rationalization.