They're contingent, dude

Mustafa Hirji attempts to wiggle out of the implications of his own post in his response to my own recent post [this backlinking is really annoying and makes it difficult to hold a conversation here...hmm, I wonder what common blog feature solves this problem...]:

Mandos responds to a post of mine by falsly attributing that I dislike Jack Layton not because he supported corruption, but because I'm angry at him for preventing the Liberal government from falling. At risk of boring readers, all I will say is that while I am angry that the Liberal government fell 6 months later than it should, that is not my reason for being angry at Jack Layton. It is possible for me to be both angry that the Liberal government survived and to be disgusted at Jack Layton willingness to support corruption. Though I'm sure there is no convincing Mandos who's decided for me what my motives are already.

Note that Mustafa hasn't really responded to what I wrote: he just switched codes. So "accountability" discourse gets replaced by "supporting corruption." Discussion of Jack Layton's actions are once again voided of political content by Mustafa's "accountability/corruption" discourse. Further discussion of motivations, policy considerations, and so on: short-circuited, illegitimate. So it's the same thing as before.

Worse, though, is that even if he didn't simply repeat what I criticized, his response makes no sense. "It is possible for me to be both angry that the Liberal government survived and to be disgusted at Jack Layton willingness to support corruption," quoth he. Dude, they're contingent. It stretches credibility, not to mention reality and logic, that you would be the latter without being the former. They and my criticism of them are all of a piece.

(Of course, Mustafa deflects all further criticism by saying that I am beyond convincing. I'm only reading what he wrote.)

As an aside, he also seems to have missed my point about the NDP's crediblity as a party. I'm saying that the NDP's problem is, "Damned if you do, damned if you don't." There's just no pleasing everyone. Part of the problem is exemplified by Mustafa's treatment of Jack Layton's actions re sponsorgate.

Update: Since the much touted alternative to comments---trackbacks---don't seem to work here either, here's my hand-crafted trackback to my Politblogo post referring to this discussion. Comments are enabled there *wink*.