Did we ever get this statement sorted out?
"Who NEVER uses whatsoever power they have to get what they want? = Who wouldn't use whatsoever power they have to get what they want."
Because they do not equal each other. "Who NEVER uses whatsoever power they have to get what they want? = Who is so pure that they have NEVER, EVER used power to get what they want?"
Cause I my eyes start to glaze over when people argue different arguments and they think they're arguing the same point.
They're partially similar, but you're right that they're not equivalent. Let's break it down to symbolic logic. I'll try to do it with words:
1) People have power. Innate ability, strings to pull, manipulation, etc. - everyone has access to a broad variety of tools to accomplish a given task. Whether or not they have chosen to use all or even most of those powers is, for the sake of the current discussion, irrelevant; the important point is that they have these powers available to them. For the moment, let us not consider powers that are available to them but of which they are actually unaware.
2) People want things, situations, etc.; there are conditions that they, at least in principle, find to be desirable.
3) Some of the powers/methods to get those desired things are less than kosher, at least by the ideals of society in principle.
4) There is a sliding, often HIGHLY subjective scale of kosherness that people are willing to sacrifice or ignore in order to obtained the desired things. Let us assign an arbitrary 0-to-10 scale of kosherness, 0 being inarguably saintly or noble or whatever, 10 being stated by pretty much everyone to be awful, psychopathic, evil or some such.
5) The first question, then, is whether there's anyone who would never venture above zero on the kosherness scale to achieve a desired thing. The second question is really a rhetorical restatement of the first, but with the subtle difference of being a thinly-veiled statement that the answer to the first question would be no. In the end, however, they point towards the same rhetorical device of a conclusion.
