At 6:18 pm -0400 30/10/04, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>Dear Mr. Tariq Ali:
>A defeat for Bush, sir, would mark a defeat for his policies, only
>if the policies of "the available alternative" were opposed to
>Bush's. However, you acknowledge that "[h]is [Kerry's] policies,
>except on abortion and some other social issues, are virtually
>indistinguishable from those of Bush." Therefore, a defeat for Bush
>will mark a defeat for Bush's policies "on abortion and some other
>social issues" but a vindication of his policies on Iraq,
>Afghanistan, and Palestine in particular, his foreign policies in
>general, and most of his economic policies (excepting the areas
>where Kerry runs to the right of Bush).
And a win for Bush is -- what? Gosh, you've got yourself into a right tangle where whether Bush wins or loses, Bush wins. And it's going to be one or the other of them -- that's what's on the table. While the comparison doesn't quite hold, isn't your reasoning here parallel to what happened in twenties/thirties Germany with that hair's worth of difference between social democrats and the fascists?
Sorry, four years ago, people like this foreigner thought there would be little difference between a Gore and a Bush as far as we were concerned. Perhaps there would have been little difference, I don't know. But for sure, we have little interest in continuing with the devil we know.
More, there are times when a hair's worth of difference might just be all the difference. Maybe I'm wrong, but this might just be one of those times.
kj