Why is "be a hero and go to a US prison" not an option? Civil disobedience always has a greater impact when you accept the consequences of your actions, or as Congressman John Lewis would call it, "good trouble."
The fact that we can only cite as governments possibly willing to grant asylum to Snowden non-democratic autocracies who have terrible records on surveillance, human rights and civil liberties should be a hint as to what their motives would be for giving him protection to begin with.
> Why is "be a hero and go to a US prison" not an option?
It is, but who wants that? When someone from a drug cartel becomes a witness, we don't say "okay, thanks, now go back there to get tortured & murdered, show that you accept the consequences of your actions", we say "thanks, now we make you disappear and get you a new identity so you can live a normal life".
The motives of Russia aren't my concern. My concern is that the governments who call themselves liberal democracies are not willing to stand up for somebody blowing the whistle on war crimes, dystopian hyper-authoritarian surveillance state programs etc.
"Snowden should have accepted being sent to Gitmo and be tortured for revealing that the US government routinely shits on the US constitution" is, to me, an infantile response. To keep at the line of "he shouldn't have gone to Russia", the question becomes: what's the alternative?
Why don't you just admit that you don't like what he did and want to see him punished for it? Pretending that you want him imprisoned to make his actions against the US government more effective/meaningful isn't fooling anybody.
The fact that we can only cite as governments possibly willing to grant asylum to Snowden non-democratic autocracies who have terrible records on surveillance, human rights and civil liberties should be a hint as to what their motives would be for giving him protection to begin with.