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That's a rather intriguing causal chain of responsibility, though. You didn't say that Nader was a potential chain reaction for the election of Bush leading up
by vezzy-fnord 11y ago
That's a rather intriguing causal chain of responsibility, though. You didn't say that Nader was a potential chain reaction for the election of Bush leading up to Iraq. No. You quite clearly said he was the reason for Iraq, and that is nothing but frothing lunacy. What kind of perverse ethics could lead to anyone but the actor who affirmed invasion (Bush) bearing responsibility for it? Or, to paraphrase from a scene in Kieslowski's film Przypadek, is someone who bumps into a person causing them to miss a train, leading them to encounter an old acquaintance, reuniting, becoming a doctor and taking the place of a colleague to deliver a lecture in another country, only to die in a plane crash - is the one who bumped him responsible for the doctor then dying in the crash? Preposterous.
- tptacek 11y agoI'm going to assume, I think safely, that a response that characterizes my comment as "frothing lunacy" is not one asking for further discussion with me.
- vezzy-fnord 11y agoNot necessarily, it's just a dramatic expression of bewilderment. Besides the whole issue of whether Nader being a spoiler and costing Gore the election as a result is even factual [1][2] (or just another intriguing but ill-supported legend like that of the disparate perceptions of Nixon/JFK on TV and on radio), there is the problem of whether blaming the person subject to an inefficiency in FPTP is overly disproportionate relatively to blaming the FPTP inefficiency itself, or the person actually responsible for the military intervention. Blaming the spoiler strikes me as a compositional fallacy at best, ethically repugnant at worse. Hell, we could even make the case that the spoiler is a victim. [1] http://prorev.com/green2000.htm http://prorev.com/green2000.htm [2] http://politizine.blogspot.com/2004/02/debunking-myth-ralph-nader-didnt-cost.html http://politizine.blogspot.com/2004/02/debunking-myth-ralph-...
- tptacek 11y agoThis is another example of an exculpatory analysis for Nader trying to convince readers that many of his voters would have broken for Bush instead of Gore if he had dropped out. Like Wikipedia, it points out that Floridian Democrats voted in anomalous numbers for Bush, implying that Floridian Naderites were the same --- which of course they were not.
- mindslight 11y agoYou do realize that if Nader dropped out, "his" voters could have voted for another third party, a write-in, or even simply not voted, right?
- tptacek 11y agoSure they could have. But statistically, we know that they wouldn't. They'd have handed the election to Gore. Nader's core supporters are liberal, and Bush was decidedly not that.
- mindslight 11y agoSince you really insist on analyzing things in a two party framework - It seems then that the democrats simply overplayed their hand from 1992-2000. They were too brazenly incongruent with their grassroots support, causing their constituents to cry uncle and look elsewhere. Getting the people to line up for what their sponsors have bought is the fundamental game, and they failed. So in effect, Bush's invasion of Iraq was actually set in motion by Clinton. I mean, in addition to that actual bombing he authorized.
- tptacek 11y agoI do not understand this argument at all. Clinton would not have invaded Iraq. Neither would Gore. To get an invasion of Iraq, you need to put Bush in the White House.
- 11y ago