"When one chooses, one chooses the world. No alibis."

Salon.com Politics | Pride before the fall
Nov. 8, 2000 | At this writing, there's a good chance that Ralph Nader's self-declared "conscience" vote in Florida will have lubricated young George Bush's way into the White House. The most fatuous president since Warren G. Harding, the most lackadaisically friendly to corporations since Reagan, the least primed for any governing activity besides rolling over for big oil, will come to power with a Green escort. Talk about making a difference.
"Al Gore cost me the election," Nader said this morning at the National Press Club. Cute, the self-righteousness of a sect.
Not long ago he declared, in effect, that even the worst Republicans weren't so bad at all, because they strengthened the opposition. "Heightening the contradictions" was the way this argument was put in the late 1960s, with reckless disregard of the people who would be hurt when those contradictions fell on their backs. "How can you spoil a system spoiled to the core?" Nader asks. Easily.
If indeed Bush is counted in, and a Republican White House does indeed join with a Republican Congress and Republican court system, it will be interesting to watch the rationalizations fly. But moral purists might consider that, if conscience is anything, it demands responsibility. It is fanaticism that washes its hands of results. Indeed, finger-pointing in every direction but home is the way of normal, stale politics. Rabbi Hillel, Dostoevski, Sartre, Gandhi (whom Naderites like to quote in other connections) have all known this central principle: When one chooses, one chooses the world. No alibis.

what does that mean? your choices have consequences? general sense of ~ 'this is not a dress rehearsal.' ~ ? . you have to choose in the world as it is. but doesn't say you choose *in* the world. you choose the world. so: your choices make the world.
why 'alibi'? ~ meaning 'excuse'? but that is not what it means. alibi - “‘elsewhere, at another place’”. so: meaning, I couldn't vote for Gore, I was with Nader. ?
context seems to call for it to mean: one takes responsibility. no rationalizations.
but I don't see how it says that.

anyway I do like the statement. When one chooses, one chooses the world. but I think what I hear in it is not what Todd Gitlin meant, I hear sth about being, affirming, worlding. if you do not have a world, how can you make any choice? that's the feeling fr wh I come at it. worldlessness, the impossibility of preferring anything (other than 'not to' - Bartleby). the world is that without which no choosing. if you choose, you choose the world.

came to this Gitlin article re Nader in 2000 election via:
ggl:"heightening the contradictions"
asllvn, prvs: The Chairman of the American Nazi Party, among other self-proclaimed racists, is voting for Obama. It's called heightening the contradictions - something all good communists and neocons also understand.
nettime: Nader - 'heightening the contradictions'?: For some time now, Nader has made it perfectly clear that his campaign isn't about trying to pull the Democrats back to the left. Rather, his strategy is the Leninist one of 'heightening the contradictions.' It's not just that Nader is willing to take a chance of being personally responsible for electing Bush. It's that he's actively trying to elect Bush because he thinks that social conditions in American need to get worse before they can better.
Arlene Goldbard » Blog Archive » Normalizing the Contradictions
One key trope of sixties activism was “heightening the contradictions.” According to this concept, when social contradictions (such as huge accumulations of wealth in the midst of crippling poverty) became extreme enough, people would get fed up and revolt.
?so racists endorsing Obama in hopes that a Pres Obama will lead to increased racism in revolt? but that is not the kind of reason they give in the article asllvn is pointing to. (& what exactly is the *contradiction* being heightened?)