> This is really perverse, a preference for the counterfactaul over the
real.
> But don't let me get in the way. jks
Now you're just deliberately misreading me. My argument is fairly simple: all other things being equal, give me a Clintonian Democrat over a Nixonian Republican any day of the week. How that implies a "preference for the counterfactual over the real" is beyond me, and perhaps thankfully so.
Besides, in some cases we obviously should desire that the world were other than it is (e.g. I wish that I lived in a world where the Vietnam war never happened). The only thing remotely "perverse" about the preference is its ineffectuality.
-- Luke