Yeah, there’s a good chance this is part of the problem - by benefiting passively from a first world that exploits so many other countries and people in the world, we become complicit, and develop a cognitive dissonance regarding our share of responsibility for the evils of the world. Especially since obviously as a child you can’t be guilty for the world you are born into, but it requires an act of emancipation to distance oneself from a system that you recognize as exploitative if not outright evil as you grow older. And it’s impossible to completely remove ourselves from it, we can only ever try and fight smaller aspects of the unfairness.

Another part that I suspect here is that many people have a complete blind spot for the fact that in order to get into a position to leak such sensitive information, Snowden specifically had to be a helping puppet to the system for quite some time.

In that way, and with the knowledge I have about the case, Chelsea Manning is way more eligible to be considered a hero, because they got a hold of documents for which they did not need to willingly participate in any kind of evil - aside from joining the military which is at least a questionable decision for many (including myself) - especially when it comes to the military of some specific countries known for frequently attacking other countries to further their own ends.