[lbo-talk] Bertell Ollman on the stolen election

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Tue Jan 25 07:34:56 PST 2005


Doug quoted:
> [for more Bertell Ollman, see <http://www.dialecticalmarxism.com>]
>
> "SHOULD THE LEFT IGNORE THE 'STOLEN ELECTION'?"
> Dept. of Politics, NYU

I often wonder why seemingly rational people entertain such delusions? It seems to be a case of what the theorist of science Imre Lakatos call "negative heuristic" - attempts to steer the inquiry away from the area that can falsify the core assumption of a theory or in this case a belief system. That core assumption threatened by empirical refutation is populism or a belief that "the people" are essentially progressive, but they are jkept form expressing their progressive will by force and institutional manipulation.

Alleging electoral fraud and calling for further inquiry into this fraud is a diversion designed to steer the attention away from the troubling fact that "the people" actually have spoken their will and it sounds like a big reactionary fart. That is to say, "the people" elected Bush because they like strong authoritarian leaders who panders to their prejudices and kicks ass of their despised scapegoats and enemies.

But at least folks like Ollman are concerned about facts, albeit they try to conceal it. Folks like Chuck, otoh, live in their own fantasy world not troubled by reality at all.

Wojtek



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