[LastTrain]

I conclude that you cannot apply consequentialism when the outcome is unknown, so the US has done something immoral and illegal, end of story.

[bluecalm]

Idk man, if my country was ruled by a dictator who faked elections I would be very happy to see some outsiders removing him. Kidnapping (and hopefully jailing for a long time) anyone who is in power by cheating the election is a big moral win in my book.

[FireBeyond]

Awesome. I think we should also extend that to leaders who have increasingly overwhelming evidence that they planned to and intended to overturn elections (just because they failed isn't an excuse, attempted murder is still a crime)...

[LastTrain]

Amazing to see so many people spelling out their rationalization in such simple terms.

[bjourne]

Do you have any evidence of the election being faked? Other than the US says so?

[stale2002]

Extensive polling shows this, yes.

Maduro is not popular. Go find the nearest Venezuelan and ask them what they think about the situation if you want to learn more.

[bjourne]

Extensive polling also showed Hillary Clinton crushing Donald Trump in the 2016 US election. Polls have been wrong before. I'm asking for evidence not anecdotes.

[stale2002]

Ok if you are just going to ignore all evidence or facts you could have just said that.

It you have an opinion, just say it. You don't have to pretend like you care about what other people are saying or what facts or evidence they have.

You can just be honest from the start that you don't agree with them and don't care what they have to say or show.

[bjourne]

I have not ignored any evidence. I've discounted vague allegations made without presenting any proof. If you care about facts then you should ask yourself why you are so sure Maduro faked the election when you haven't seen any evidence.

[ImJamal]

Many of the polls were looking at popular votes, not the electoral college which Clinton did win.

[pqtyw]

Not really, though? Most polls going almost as fat back as September were within the margin of error.

Clinton won the popular vote by 2% and she was on average 3-4% ahead in the polls..

In fact she she got more votes than predicted in early November since 3rd party candidates significantly underperformed relative to what they were polling.

[bluecalm]

I mean look up why recent Nobel Prize winner got the prize. It's not just US saying so.

[bjourne]

In other words, no, you don't?

[bluecalm]

International observers concluded the election didn't meet standards of international election and those were already heavily filtered.

It seems the only evidence you would accept is written testimony signed by Maduro himself. I don't think it's a reasonable standard though.

If we accepted your standards we would be helping dictators stay in power. This is not reasonable way of thinking imo.

[chasil]

Is this a trustworthy source?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd1d10453zno

[bjourne]

> The US secretary of state has said there was "overwhelming evidence" Venezuela's opposition won the recent presidential election.

As I wrote, "the US says so" is not evidence.

[tbrownaw]

> cannot apply consequentialism when the outcome is unknown

Can you not substitute the mean expected outcome where the factual outcome is not yet known?

[LastTrain]

If you have the data, are extremely careful and build a coalition, maybe. This admin has done none of that and the answer if asked will be “eat shit”. Blows my fucking mind that there are apologists for this.

[Sporktacular]

Not when you're claming the moral high ground and all you have is guesswork.

[calf]

Recklessness is immoral, and look how the discourse normalizes it so cleverly.