Will Democrats lose for a decade or go far-right?

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Raptor's ethical point is pretty much confused, as he's literally just affirmed that might makes right.

That being said, if we have false beliefs about the nature of politics, people will suffer for them. This may be the people who suffer from the existence of superpowers, or the people who suffer from the lack of stability provided by the hegemony of superpowers and their willingness to step in the keep the world stable.(I'm not providing a strong defense, but I'd rather not see an ideological impulse stand above pragmatism)

Declension, you do realize that nobody who doesn't currently agree with you should be overly persuaded by a quote from someone as far-left as Noam Chomsky, right?

You do also realize that the Noam Chomsky quote really proves nothing anyway, right? The major proponent of the idea that "powers promote stability" is a belief called "Realism". Whether the name is apt is beside the point, but the issue is that Realism holds that the rational actions of nations are what often tend to lead to violence, war, and all of that, so pointing out how certain nations take rational, neutral-seeming, actions really doesn't prove anything against that other theory. The real question under Realism is Balance of Power, so if Iran's actions or any other nation's actions, are such that they endanger the balance of power(which in Iran's case could be involving the struggle between Islamic powers and Israel), they can cause international instability and conflict until power is rebalanced and each nation is held back from aggressiveness by sufficient fear of the consequences given by other nations. Once one understands this mentality, the mockery is really to make a strawman of the issue.

So, do you have an argument, or are you just trying to engage in some pathetic effort to snipe using a source that is already known in advance to be so biased that it couldn't even begin to be used as a supporting text.

I wasn't quoting scripture. I was going to make the point myself, but then remembered that Chomsky already said it better.



The current balance of power is that the US is vastly more powerful than every other entity. This arrangement causes conflict - it doesn't prevent conflict. For example, if Iraq had power comparable to the US, then the US would not have invaded Iraq.



I agree that this would be a nice world. It isn't the world which we live in. In the world which we live in, the US has very little to fear from other entities, and so it does whatever it likes.

Are you really going to harass me about an argument you think is sub-par, and them come back with that (in bold)? Seriously?



Beyond a reasonable doubt? No, but a guy spending 7 times what his opponent did and only gaining one point vs the same guy he ran against only two years prior is awfully suggestive. Like you said, there's no way of knowing for sure, but the actual Wisconsinites here are saying the union thing wasn't even that much of an issue, and all that extra advertising having just been wasted preaching to the choir is no less likely than it having been decisive in the election.



You know, if you spent half as much energy crafting your arguments as you put into trying to label me, you might just be a challenge to argue with. Partisan won't stick, so you have to craft some other narrative to hang on me; I'd love to know by what rationale you butting into an exchange between me and a 3rd party where you make it about me equates to my having an ego problem. I imagine it's quite fascinating.

So you've just shown that it is unhealthy for there to be a single global superpower. Except...oh wait! Right now there only is the single global superpower (China might be growing but it isn't there yet)! So I guess we'd better hope China keeps growing so that the rest of the world is cought in between the two rather than simply swallowed into an American empire!

He doesn't have to though. There is a quote in ethics: "Ought implies can". If it cannot be done, then there is no ethical prescription.


Actually, he didn't. He only accepted that the USSR's actions were better off to be counterbalanced by the US, not that single superpowers were unhealthy. Frankly, the entire matter ends up being complicated.

Right... except that it doesn't actually engage any opposition. It was an utterly unintelligent comment by Chomsky, rather than an actual serious analysis. I mean, the only kinds of people who'd find this compelling are those who think in talking bites, rather than people with any critical mind. (And I'm not saying that I can't be wrong, only the presentation is that bad)


How would you know? There is more peace now than any other time. I mean, the bipolar power arrangement led to constant fears of the destruction of all of mankind. I mean, you remember the Cuban Missile crisis existed, right? How would Iraq be different in this situation than Cold War USSR? Are you really not thinking about this? Not only that, but various proxy wars were the nature of the beast. Multipower-arrangements were popular in Europe, but they were the cause of many many wars.


The US doesn't do a lot. I mean, seriously, you have to compare an invasion in Iraq to the longstanding European tradition of colonialism or something like that... and yeah, not similar enough to justify your critical attitude. Part of this is that the cost of military action relative to other actions for a self-interested nation have gone up, and the benefits have gone down.

That being said, maybe a hegemonic power-situation is not a great thing. That doesn't mean that giving up this power would be a good thing and/or that we should seek for another nation to rise into power. The US is the devil we know, and the devils we do not know may easily have no knowledge of any US ideal and probably will not have any knowledge of these radical left ideals in the first place and probably little regard for them anyway.

I guess sort of extended it a bit. In my mind any country exerting its will on another one is wrong--it doesn't matter if the offender is capitalist or communist, democracy or dictatorship. Now that the USSR is gone the US has no excuse to do this sort of thing. And it does happen, as various wikileaks have shown. I believe there have been some attempts to undermine the Venezuelan and Bolivian governments (and other members of that bloc). Now, I'm not a huge fan of Chavez, but this is a Venezuelan matter and the country do not deserve to have its sovereignty violated.

Whenever there is some massive humanitarian crisis, the USA and other wealthy nations are called to step in. I would have been perfectly happy to stay out of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Iraq period, Afganistan after kicking Al Quaida's ass, Libya, Syria, anything to do with the palestinians, and Haiti. If the USA did that, we would have been accused of being isolationist and neglecting some moral duty to help humanity. I really don't care if I receive that criticism, but the government and others in the USA do.

Look at Europe's whinging about the USA not entering WWII until late in the game.

Well, in WWII Hitler was arguably a global threat. Certainly he was a threat to surrounding nations. So I'm not as sure on that one. What I'm talking about is meddling in a country's domestic politics. I know of at least 3 instances when the CIA helped with coups against democratic governments and the country in question ended up with a dictatorship.

There is a big difference between Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and some of the things done by the USA. Iraq could not be justified by R2P. Libya could be at first but I do not believe that R2P justified the bombings. Instead we should have been helping to negotiate a ceasefire.

And in my mind, any country exerting it's will on it's own people is just as suspect. However, in this a lot of the justification is from the conclusions of this. I mean, maybe you might cite some nonsense about the "will of the people", but would you rather have a freedom-loving monarch, or a tyrannical religious democracy? I'd think the latter, in spite of democratic consent. And in all honesty, I don't see much value to give to democratic consent. I don't see how somebody being my neighbor gives them the inherent right over my own actions. I can see practical reasons, but not some deep-seated moral cause. And we can go so on and so forth, but... my deep conviction is that in the end, you will end up having to endorse brutal realities(not every decision in organizing a society will allow you to remain with clean hands, as the very question of politics also includes "Who must die?", and so objecting to a reality on the mere basis of its brutality will end up seeming absurd.

I would have like to see Hitler wage a war across either the Atlantic or Pacific oceans. People seem to forget he wasn't our neighbor. It sucked for the rest of Europe, but they're the ones who tried to appease them initially. You reap what you sow.
I also disagree with R2P. We should stay out of civil wars. Let the blood shed be limited to the warring factions.

So you're not going to explain why you think my argument is sub-par, just shoot it down with sarcasm? Sorry, that's way too easy. Next.


Why are you still making the argument that he only gained one point from advertizing when I already explained that your null hypothesis is incorrect? You're argument makes the implicit assumption that with the same proportion of advertizing, the election result would be exactly the same as it was in November 2010. A lot happened between 2010 and now. Job growth that right-wing policies promised to produce hasn't fully materialized no matter who's numbers you go by. In November 2010 there wasn't yet a sizable moderate backlash against Tea Party representatives. You can't ignore changed variables between Nov 2010 and now.


Weak.

Do I have to explain why "people wouldn't spend the money if it didn't work" isn't a valid argument? I was giving you the benefit of the doubt there.

Also, your dig loses quite a bit of it's sting in light of...



Not going to explain how you arrived at: Me countering a claim being made for rhetorical technique + you making the discussion about me personally = me being an egomaniac... ? Some people might call that hypocritical, calling out someone for sarcastically dismissing an easy point, and then attempting to do the same to a not so easy one in the very same post.

As to:



And neither can you. No one knows what the outcome would have been without advertising, if the money situation had been different, etc. All I'm saying is that my point, that for all that spending the results were nearly identical to the last time these two candidates ran against each other for the same office in the same state, is no more preposterous than "Walker bought the election", a statement I believe I've seen you endorse. Of course I've also seen you blame things on Citizens United that were legal before the ruling as the involved funding has come from private individuals and not corporations, but that's pretty par for the course these days.

There was no real need for many of the things done by the USA. Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction. Chile under Salvador Allende did not pose a threat to national security. Dido for Iran in the 1950s. Yet in each of these cases the US intervened, although the government knew full well that there was no threat. That is not action based on practical need. That is imperialism.