What if?

Obviously one themes in this series of posts is dominator culture, but another important component is that the Democrat and Republican parties are not the same and that those differences matter.

I want to go back in time to the 2000 election and imagine that Gore won.

You don't even have to imagine that crucial state Florida was not governed by George W. Bush's brother Jeb and that the secretary of state, Kathleen Harris, was not the co-chair of W's Florida state election efforts, and that boxes of votes didn't disappear from precincts with predominantly Black voters. (You don't even have to imagine a lifelong Republican temporarily registering as a Democrat and getting into position to design the notorious butterfly ballots.)

You probably should imagine that Ralph Nader did not run as a third-party candidate claiming there was no difference between the two parties. (It's not that he made the difference; it's just that he was an unhelpful liar with a huge ego, and we need to pay more attention to that sort of thing.)

The election was so close -- even with all of the Republican corruption -- that any attempts to fix some of the issues would surely have given Gore the victory. I know that influenced the Supreme Court decision. It should not be too hard to imagine Gore winning, even in the home of the proverbial "Florida man."

Do you believe that Al Gore would have ignored intelligence briefings about people wanting to learn how to fly but not caring about how to land?

Especially, would he have ignored the information because he only wanted to hear about potential justifications for invading Iraq?

Do you believe that if the attack had happened anyway, Gore would have invaded Iraq? Afghanistan maybe, but Iraq? 

Imagine no Patriot Act and no Abu Graib. 

Do you believe that -- after eight years under Clinton had created a budget surplus -- that Gore would have then decided the best thing for the economy was tax cuts for the rich? (A positive economic result from the tax cuts turned out not to be true.)

I think you could argue that Gore's environmental interest was not as obvious until An Inconvenient Truth came out a few years later, but it seems likely that he would have taken better environmental steps, something the Green Party would claim to believe in, though the Sunrise Movement doesn't seem to care anymore.

It is not unprecedented that a successful run by a vice president leads to only a single term, so Gore might not have still been in office when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. The stage was set before, so do you believe Gore would have ignored reports from the Army Corps of Engineers about the needed repairs to the levees in New Orleans?

Efforts to reduce global warming would probably not have acted quickly enough to reduce the strength of the storm, but the impact was not just the strength; it was construction and neglect that was man-made.

Clearly this is all speculative. First of all, even assuming that Gore would have had the same information and resources but better intentions, there are always other factors. You can send investigators after the flight students, but then the plan might be accelerated. You can schedule repairs to the levees, but maybe the soonest it can be done is 2006 so it still ends up being too late.

Gore would have continued to have an obstructionist congress, I am sure.

There are still things that can be better indicators. Better results can be more likely with some than with others. 

I have treated reasons for that before but I suspect I will get into them again. The main point for today is having the intellectual honesty to admit the difference and that the difference matters.

I should also add something about intellectual curiosity.

One of the common refrains on the right is "Hey remember how everyone made a big deal about the hole in the ozone, then it just went away?"

It didn't "just" go away. Scientists studied it and every member of the United Nations plus a few additional signatories ratified the Montreal Protocol  phasing out substances that contributed to ozone depletion, including chloroflourocarbons, in 1987. (It was a big Model UN issue.)

Even the United States under Ronald Reagan agreed to it and it worked.

It is not completely done. The ozone is healing, but the estimates are that it won't be back to 1980 levels over Antarctica until 2066, though for the rest of the world by 2040. That's 39 years later.

You can make improvements with knowledge, cooperation, and time. It can happen.

Then dishonest people will pretend it never mattered and uninformed people will agree with them and feel very superior.

It all matters.