> Living on planet earth just is an epistemology course :-> and you have a
> normative baseline for the discussion which you haven't expressed and, if
> you remain aloof, will bring even more unnecessary scorn from MD [even as
> I don't think such scorn is conducive to sorting events out in the e-lab
> of lbo]. That being written, the attribution of motives is always
> problematic, but given the evidence we have now as compared to what was
> available in 1972-1976 re US-Latin America policy, methinks MD, Chomsky
> and others are largely on target. The explanatory/narrative burden re
> attribution of motives is on you.
Justin doesn't even think we're reading Chomsky correctly. However, if we go with the Dawson/Estabrook/Weiger interpretation, Chomsky's wrong for the sort of reasons Justin and I have already discussed. I'm not eager to rehash them yet again. What exactly do we "know now" that suggests Dawson et al. are on target?
> Quite, but you're exploiting a counterfactual strategy to support your
> attempt at making a positive claim [which is?].......
> What evidence do you have, ex post, that an Allende administration would
> have been *bad* for the Chilean people as compared to Pinochet? None,
> because there is not and cannot be, any..........
Counterfactual talk is essential to political discourse. But that's beside the point. I'm not claiming that Chile would've been worse off under Allende. I'm claiming that Nixon and Kissinger _actually_ believed that Chile would've been worse off.
> Have fun w/your time machine in an attempt to get to the ex ante realm
> you'd need to justify your claims........
If I'd dropped my glass last night, it would've fallen to the floor. We don't need time machines to assess the truth-values of counterfactual statements. We're often unable to say what would've happened given different political circumstances because our understanding of how people and policies actually work is far from complete.
-- Luke