= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Vaniver comments on Stanislav Petrov Day - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (164)
Er, the US still supports Israel, and the US still opposes communism. Again, there's a difference between changing things and fulfilling your aspirations.
The Kennedy political dynasty disappeared, though, which is something to gladden the hearts of Republicans.
I don't see evidence that Sirhan Sirhan was Republican, and Oswald was definitely a communist. It's not clear to me how that supports your point.
(As well, you may have heard of this guy, goes by the name of Ted.)
Ted never came anywhere near the presidency and then he sealed the deal with his little car accident; JFK was hoping for two terms, of course, to be followed by RFK, since they were the gifted ones. Killing Ted would be useful from the Republican POV, of course, since Ted did a lot of good work in the Senate, but Robert and John were the threats.
The point is that each had a vastly greater impact on the political process than they ever could have had by non-assassination routes.
That the impact was not in the direction of their goals is immaterial, because all that means is one needs slightly better planning and then one will have both vast impact on politics and do so in the direction of one's goals. The need for tweaks does not refute the basic point about marginal advantage. (I just said this in my other comment.)
I thought we were talking about success, not impact.
OK, so what we're learning here is that, while Sirhan and Oswald didn't achieve their goals (which after all were far fetched and which nobody else has achieved since), the Republican Party would have achieved its goals (which were rather modest and much closer at hand) quite well by assassination. (And of course, that's the basis from which many conspiracy theorists start: qui bono and all that. Even if you don't buy their specific theories, which are usually nonsense, you can agree with them that such conspiracies would have been effective if they were real.)
As a Republican I have to disagree with you.
We lost one of the most conservative Democrats in recent memory and got LBJ instead.
Also JFK the martyr probably did a lot more for the liberal cause than JFK the president ever did or would do.
I'm imagining your various organs in line for the polls. Most of 'em vote for your brain.
ETA: aw, you changed it.
Visiting the JFK Museum in Dallas just reinforces the huge dissonance between Kennedy-the-man and Kennedy-the-myth. If the presentations are to be believed, Kennedy would have pulled the US out of Vietnam, ended racial strife, and generally achieved liberal utopia.
Those assertions are incredibly laughable given what we know about (a) Kennedy's politics and (b) what actually happened in the decades after his death.
I'm surprised that a forum regular would identify with either of the two major US political parties. Keep your identity small and all that.
Note: it's "keep your identity small" not "have no identity".
Still disappointed that people's identity is so big that that of Greens or Blues fits in it. (Especially when “Greens” are teal and “Blues” are cyan.)