Um. Yeah…that’s what you said, and then I said what you quoted there after you said that. So…uh…what exactly are these “pragmatic decisions that help the cause long-term” again?
You have a real problem with quote cutting don’t you? Once again, the sentence that follows the one that you pasted (i.e. the sentence you conveniently left out) offers clarification. I’ll say it again: Since when do you have to be “in the wrong” to be the cause of something?
The door is now closed because you pushed it shut. You were the cause of the door-close. Does that mean you were “in the wrong”? Or is “wrong” completely irrelevant to the cause and effect?
Yes, I see a chain of events, that ended in a divide, and that began with Rand doing what he did. That to me says what happened first was the cause.
Once again, you’re saying: Yes, Rand dropped the bell…and then gravity pulled it downward…and it ended up cracked. So if gravity hadn’t have pulled it down to the ground, it wouldn’t have been cracked.
The whole point is, if Rand hadn’t have dropped it in the first place, gravity wouldn’t have pulled it downward.
Why you’re so insistent on focusing on the middle instead of the beginning, I can’t be sure. But it would seem to me you are in the Jack Hunter crowd of apparatchiks with their ready to fire “oh he’s thinking pragmatically, he’s thinking long term, you gotta give a little to get a little, some is better than nothing, this is how politics is, etc. etc. etc.” So my guess as to why you’d want to focus on people who stayed true to the principles of the movement instead of going along to get along when Rand evidently did just that, is because obviously someone has to be blamed, and of course it can’t be Rand.
You need oxygen to have fire. Oxygen is a “necessary condition”. This does not mean that oxygen (a virtual constant in air) is “responsible” or “to blame” for the fire the arsonist ignited.
The amount of acrobatics you apologists will do is just incredible.