I can't prove a negative. I was making no attempt at being "conclusive", because being "conclusive" in this instance is/was not possible.

Sorry. I didn't mean to say you were being "conclusive". I've seen a couple people say (paraphrasing) "Al Gore would not have invaded Iraq", like it was Gospel truth. I've said several times, the probability of that would have been low, IMHO. But low > zero. That's it. Of course we'll never know since you don't get to replay history.

Beyond that, you seem to put an awful lot of weight behind being pres makes a big difference in what a person might or might not have to decide to do. I don't. Or at least I don't allow whomever is pres to use it as an excuse for doing stupid shit that I don't happen to agree with that they use just because they were pres and had all the inside supersecretkooldope to deal with.

We simply disagree on this. I think people are susceptible to the pressures and incentives they are subject to, that behavior is dependent on situations. This is not to excuse anything - just an explanation of why I think being Prez vs. being a private citizen matters.

Here is an example from my own life. I'm a much better father and husband when work is relatively laid back and calm, than when we have a release at the end of the week and QA just found 2 major bugs in the code I'm responsible for. That doesn't mean it's OK for me to put my kids in front of the TV instead of playing a game with them just so I can veg, but it simply is a fact that I'm more likely to do so.

I missed this before but I want to respond to it now because it is so obviously wrong. Zero, you are the pessimist to Kitt's optimism.

Guilty as charged, I'm definitely a pessimist. Don't mean I'm wrong tho. Not that I'm infallible, but I have good reasons for my pessimism.

Do you think there would have ever been a civil rights movement, that achieved the things it did achieve, if MLK Jr. had thought either "I will trust the government to do right by African Americans" or "The government is shit and there is nothing that can be done."

No. Sometimes things do get better.

Sometimes they get worse, despite those working to make things better - look at Cambodia, or Rwanda, or Nazi Germany. Look at the Bush administration.

Think about that a minute and then tell me again how there is no solution

There is no solution.

Speaking of which, I haven't seen any suggestions from you on this score. I'll be happy to listen if you've got some new ideas, so let's hear 'em.

I am trying to maintain my calm here.

And not doing a very good job of it - LOL!

Did I not just give you an example of a possible solution

Actually, no. Did the civil rights movement end the, what is it called, big business/MIC stranglehold on the 2 parties? Did Ghandi eliminate violence between Hindus and Muslims?

I'll answer my own questions - no, and no.

Some significant gains were made, and that's great. But past successes are not necessarily reproducible, and successful strategies for one kind of problem do not necessarily translate well to other areas.

So, how do you propose we solve peak oil? By sitting at the front of the bus? Is that how we'll avert climate catastrophe?

Even considering the narrow question of how to defeat the MIC, nothing has worked yet. The examples you point to must currently be viewed as failures.

So, I ask again, what is your solution?

And please, try to remain calm while typing your answer.

Wow, I missed a lot this evening.

At the risk of igniting another flame fest (it's never stopped me before!), I'll throw out a few more comments.

I do think that the far reaching implications of having a non-white president [for lack of a better or safer word] will be felt over time, and will have a lot to do with social changes that will one day be taken for granted. Just as the ones produced by civil rights legislation [which are the product of administrations that started and continued the Vietnam War] are taken for granted today.

Sounds good!

That cultural and societal change can have such diverse impacts as making us less prone to believe propaganda about muslims and other groups which facilitate support for war. I'm not saying its a given, I'm saying at least there's reason to hope for the kind of broad social change that will alter our hegemonic trajectory.

Pessimist that I am, I'm not hopeful about altering the hegemonic trajectory bit. My fear is that we will merely get a color/race/gender blind hegemony. And to date the politicians who are not white males haven't given me much reason for optimism.

No sense arguing about it though - time will tell which one of us is correct, and I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

In other words, no going back to full employment, let alone rising standards of living and other such frivolities.

Very true. There are no longer enough resources to exploit on the planet to keep the capitalist growth machine going. Economies are now entering an era of continued contraction.

All the financial tinkering the gov't is doing can't possibly solve the crisis, because money can't conjure up oil and metal and arable land out of nothing.

In fact, the focus on the financial problems distracts us from the real problem, which is fundamentally a carrying capacity deficit. The longer we focus on bailouts and rescue plans, and pretend we can get back to 2% economic growth every year, the carrying capacity grows worse, and the consequences Mother Nature will impose in the future become more draconian.