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Different context, but Dan Savage articulates this well. Relevant (and censored, because he is who he is) paragraph from a long blog post [1] on Sanders vs. Cli

by azernik 10y ago

Different context, but Dan Savage articulates this well. Relevant (and censored, because he is who he is) paragraph from a long blog post [1] on Sanders vs. Clinton: 'It's ####ing moronic—it's political malpractice—to attack a politician for coming around on your issues. There are lots of other issues the queer community is going to be pressing politicians on, from passing equal rights bills and trans rights bills to defeating anti-trans bathroom legislation and RFRAs. If pols who are currently on the wrong side of any of those issues see no benefit to changing their positions—if they see no political benefit—they're going to be harder to persuade. Why should they come around on our issues, why should they switch sides or change their votes, if we're going to go after them hammer and tongs for the positions they used to hold? ("Please change your mind and support us." "No." "Pretty please?" "OK, I've changed my mind and I'll vote to support you." "#### YOU FOR NOT ALWAYS AGREEING WITH ME! I'M NOT VOTING FOR YOU! #### YOU SOME MORE!")' [1] http://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2016/02/22/23606058/hillary-clinton-used-to-be-terrible-on-marriage-equality http://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2016/02/22/23606058/hi...

golergka 10y ago
It's because people want to see politicians as idealists — while usually, cynics who just want to get elected actually make the best politicians in a functioning democracy while idealists tend to become bloody tyrants.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  Mao and Pol Pot, maybe, but the vast majority of bloody tyrants are cynics, too.
duncanawoods 10y ago
In the Clinton case, she doesn't own her flip flops, she tries to rewrite history. Instead of discussing in depth how and what changed her mind (which would be really powerful), she will just claim to have always been a tireless campaigner for the issue. Its evident her flip flops are not from a change of personal philosophy but only because its now politically expedient to adopt a position. Similarly with Oculus. Have they changed their philosophy on openness? Probably not. We will just see them attempt their goal in a different way e.g. all sorts of incompatible features in their v2.
- spb 10y ago
  In the Hillary Clinton case, it's not because she changed her opinion - it's because she only changed her opinion once it was clear she'd face more backlash for holding it than abandoning it (indeed, the opposite appears to be the only reason she'd ever held her original stance in the first place). This indicates that, on future civil-rights issues to come that will have a similar public adoption curve (ie. transgender acceptance), she'll take the same strategy of appeasing the opposition until she can no longer get away with it - and, by turn, if the political winds blow the other way and the makeup of her constituency regresses toward a majority of bigots, she'd be perfectly willing to strip those enfranchised by her previously-enacted positions, so as to be continuously pleasing the majority. Voters refusing to fall in for Hillary Clinton are holding out for a candidate like Bernie Sanders, who has made it clear that he will follow his moral compass, even when the people around him have been whipped into a hateful frenzy. Considering the history-repeating-itself rise of nationalism and racism in the face of economic hardship the world is currently barreling toward, this is the only kind of leader that Sanders supports feel could possibly help to right the ship.
  - SixSigma 10y ago
    Meanwhile : Bernie Sanders Says He Will Vote for Hillary Clinton http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/06/25/us/politics/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/06/25/us/politics/bernie-sand...
    - pessimizer 10y ago
      A Trump presidency scares people. Especially with the current power of the Executive. About half of his supporters say that they'll vote for Clinton, too. Do you think that it's inconsistent with Sanders' stated positions that he supports Clinton over Trump?
      - SixSigma 10y ago
        That's not being guided by a moral compass, it is being pragmatic. I will do everything in my power to fight Wall Street, by which I mean I will help their candidate into the Whitehouse.
spb 10y ago
Well, this is missing the point, in both cases. Opponents of neither Hillary Clinton nor Oculus are opposing them for the sole reason "they used to have this opinion". In Oculus's case, this DRM was only the most obscene manifestation of their exclusivity strategy - the one that would set them up to be, going forward, between a legal rock and a PR hard place if they kept it in (they'd have to either leave ReVive's DRM-breaking alone, making their case in court harder if suing someone breaking DRM with the intent to steal games, or they'd have to send ReVive a DMCA takedown, and face a fatal PR backlash). While Oculus has extricated themselves from that strategically untenable position, they're still pursuing a market-dividing strategy of exclusives through every other, subtler and less-ambiguously-legal, avenues, like timed exclusivity deals. THIS is why people are continuing to rail against Oculus. If Oculus genuinely changed their position on exclusives (ie, they removed that restriction for every game they'd "supported" with such a deal), the VR enthusiast community would, reluctantly, welcome them back into the fold. However, that is nowhere near what Oculus are actually doing here - they're just adjusting their course so that they'll face less resistance to do the stuff everybody hates them for. So as to keep this comment "apolitical" (as if corporate actions are less consequential than outright political ones), I've posted my response to Savage in a separate thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11973600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11973600
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- paavokoya 10y ago
  Exactly. Flip-flopping is not bad. Having malicious intent is bad regardless of the method or "opinion". Both cases here are bad. Abandoning early backers for profit is malicious. No one forced Hillary to rally against gay-marriage in 2004, she did that for political influence. That is malicious. The fact that she has switched sides now that it's favorable (for even more political influence) proves it.
pdeuchler 10y ago
Hahaha, this comment is exactly why Sanders and his supporters continue to attack Clinton on the issues. It shows a clear misunderstanding of why the issues popped up in the first place and the world view that makes such issues important. It assumes that politics is just tit for tat, and issues are like the American flag pin politicians wear after tragedies... merely accessories to appeal to a certain demographic in order to garner votes. Funny to see Dan Savage labeling people holding a politicians feet to the fire as "political malpractice" though, as if lip service to dearly held beliefs should be enough to shelter politicians from any and all criticism. Haven't you guys heard? Politics is just a game for the DC pundit elite to play, and the poors who campaign for issues that directly effect their day to day lives need to simmer down and stop being so hostile. The real reasons Clinton continues to get attacked for "coming around" on issues that she's "come around" for are: 1) Disingenuous support. Clinton seems to be doing 180's on issues that are not only completely antithetical to her past actions and words (and current platform), but also completely antithetical to the aims of the people who continue to give her money. This brings her incentives into question, especially when she won't release her material used at private fundraisers (remember when the Clinton campaign actively pumped white noise into a neighborhood to prevent the surrounding areas to hear what she was saying over loudspeakers at an outdoor event?) 2) Her past history shows a continued reneging on progressive positions after election time and continued return to center. Continuing to press the issue makes this a lot harder to do, and makes any future turn around a lot more apparent in it's hypocrisy. 3) Lip service/superficial support that will create no real policy changes. An example of this is the minimum wage 180. $12 is what a lot of progressive activists were looking for 10 years ago, before 2008 and the financial crisis. The logic goes that after years of hardship by the middle and lower class a higher number is needed to fully right the economic ship. Such a partial endorsement and half hearted attempt to satisfy "both sides" speaks to political machinations and a centrist mentality that would easily compromise further against any opposition. This point of view is reinforced and mainly driven by Clinton's history as an elected official. 4) The constant and incessant slandering and character assassination of Sanders and his supporters by Clinton and her supporters. Do you really expect to be welcomed with open arms for half heartedly accepting facets of Sanders' platform after running article after article about how that platform is the worst thing to happen to America since Jim Crow? How about how the meme where the entirety of the opposition are misogynistic white men out to ruin women for the sake of ruining women? How their insistence on a progressive agenda is somehow akin to Gore losing, and thus the inception of the Iraq war (which Hillary voted for). How about the hit pieces describing the imaginary "bros" who will vote for Trump, when in reality the entire factual basis for that narrative was a parody twitter account run by 4chan Trump supporters. Not even getting into the whole "you are the sum of your vocal, virulent minority, but please don't use that same argument against our campaign" tripe that seems to be spewed whenever a Clinton supporter gets backed into a corner. Apologies for this off topic rant, but boy does rhetoric like that above really get me steaming. It's gone on for too long and it's embarrassing to see on Hacker News.
Yver 10y ago
The other side of that coin is there needs to be a cost to bad actions. If Bernie Maddoff was to reimburse every penny he stole, would you ask people to trust him with their money? I expect not. Similarly, if a politician was against equal rights for a long time and only changed their mind around the time it was ruled unconstitutional, I wouldn't ask people to trust them with their future.
chongli 10y ago
Why should they come around on our issues Because it's not about issues anymore, it's about identity. We live in the era of identity politics. Issues serve only as litmus tests, dog whistles, and shibboleths today. When a politician comes around on an issue, they give off a red flag: they are not a genuine member of the ingroup. They are an impostor.
dang 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11971984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11971984 and marked it off-topic.
- azernik 10y ago
  Yeah. I mostly intended commentary on the Oculus issue, but the context of the quote was definitely inflammatory.

by azernik 10y ago

golergka 10y ago

It's because people want to see politicians as idealists — while usually, cynics who just want to get elected actually make the best politicians in a functioning democracy while idealists tend to become bloody tyrants.

pessimizer 10y ago
Mao and Pol Pot, maybe, but the vast majority of bloody tyrants are cynics, too.

duncanawoods 10y ago

In the Clinton case, she doesn't own her flip flops, she tries to rewrite history. Instead of discussing in depth how and what changed her mind (which would be really powerful), she will just claim to have always been a tireless campaigner for the issue. Its evident her flip flops are not from a change of personal philosophy but only because its now politically expedient to adopt a position. Similarly with Oculus. Have they changed their philosophy on openness? Probably not. We will just see them attempt their goal in a different way e.g. all sorts of incompatible features in their v2.

spb 10y ago
In the Hillary Clinton case, it's not because she changed her opinion - it's because she only changed her opinion once it was clear she'd face more backlash for holding it than abandoning it (indeed, the opposite appears to be the only reason she'd ever held her original stance in the first place). This indicates that, on future civil-rights issues to come that will have a similar public adoption curve (ie. transgender acceptance), she'll take the same strategy of appeasing the opposition until she can no longer get away with it - and, by turn, if the political winds blow the other way and the makeup of her constituency regresses toward a majority of bigots, she'd be perfectly willing to strip those enfranchised by her previously-enacted positions, so as to be continuously pleasing the majority. Voters refusing to fall in for Hillary Clinton are holding out for a candidate like Bernie Sanders, who has made it clear that he will follow his moral compass, even when the people around him have been whipped into a hateful frenzy. Considering the history-repeating-itself rise of nationalism and racism in the face of economic hardship the world is currently barreling toward, this is the only kind of leader that Sanders supports feel could possibly help to right the ship.
- SixSigma 10y ago
  Meanwhile : Bernie Sanders Says He Will Vote for Hillary Clinton http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/06/25/us/politics/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/06/25/us/politics/bernie-sand...
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    A Trump presidency scares people. Especially with the current power of the Executive. About half of his supporters say that they'll vote for Clinton, too. Do you think that it's inconsistent with Sanders' stated positions that he supports Clinton over Trump?
    - SixSigma 10y ago
      That's not being guided by a moral compass, it is being pragmatic. I will do everything in my power to fight Wall Street, by which I mean I will help their candidate into the Whitehouse.

spb 10y ago

Well, this is missing the point, in both cases. Opponents of neither Hillary Clinton nor Oculus are opposing them for the sole reason "they used to have this opinion". In Oculus's case, this DRM was only the most obscene manifestation of their exclusivity strategy - the one that would set them up to be, going forward, between a legal rock and a PR hard place if they kept it in (they'd have to either leave ReVive's DRM-breaking alone, making their case in court harder if suing someone breaking DRM with the intent to steal games, or they'd have to send ReVive a DMCA takedown, and face a fatal PR backlash). While Oculus has extricated themselves from that strategically untenable position, they're still pursuing a market-dividing strategy of exclusives through every other, subtler and less-ambiguously-legal, avenues, like timed exclusivity deals. THIS is why people are continuing to rail against Oculus. If Oculus genuinely changed their position on exclusives (ie, they removed that restriction for every game they'd "supported" with such a deal), the VR enthusiast community would, reluctantly, welcome them back into the fold. However, that is nowhere near what Oculus are actually doing here - they're just adjusting their course so that they'll face less resistance to do the stuff everybody hates them for. So as to keep this comment "apolitical" (as if corporate actions are less consequential than outright political ones), I've posted my response to Savage in a separate thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11973600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11973600

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
paavokoya 10y ago
Exactly. Flip-flopping is not bad. Having malicious intent is bad regardless of the method or "opinion". Both cases here are bad. Abandoning early backers for profit is malicious. No one forced Hillary to rally against gay-marriage in 2004, she did that for political influence. That is malicious. The fact that she has switched sides now that it's favorable (for even more political influence) proves it.

pdeuchler 10y ago

Hahaha, this comment is exactly why Sanders and his supporters continue to attack Clinton on the issues. It shows a clear misunderstanding of why the issues popped up in the first place and the world view that makes such issues important. It assumes that politics is just tit for tat, and issues are like the American flag pin politicians wear after tragedies... merely accessories to appeal to a certain demographic in order to garner votes. Funny to see Dan Savage labeling people holding a politicians feet to the fire as "political malpractice" though, as if lip service to dearly held beliefs should be enough to shelter politicians from any and all criticism. Haven't you guys heard? Politics is just a game for the DC pundit elite to play, and the poors who campaign for issues that directly effect their day to day lives need to simmer down and stop being so hostile. The real reasons Clinton continues to get attacked for "coming around" on issues that she's "come around" for are: 1) Disingenuous support. Clinton seems to be doing 180's on issues that are not only completely antithetical to her past actions and words (and current platform), but also completely antithetical to the aims of the people who continue to give her money. This brings her incentives into question, especially when she won't release her material used at private fundraisers (remember when the Clinton campaign actively pumped white noise into a neighborhood to prevent the surrounding areas to hear what she was saying over loudspeakers at an outdoor event?) 2) Her past history shows a continued reneging on progressive positions after election time and continued return to center. Continuing to press the issue makes this a lot harder to do, and makes any future turn around a lot more apparent in it's hypocrisy. 3) Lip service/superficial support that will create no real policy changes. An example of this is the minimum wage 180. $12 is what a lot of progressive activists were looking for 10 years ago, before 2008 and the financial crisis. The logic goes that after years of hardship by the middle and lower class a higher number is needed to fully right the economic ship. Such a partial endorsement and half hearted attempt to satisfy "both sides" speaks to political machinations and a centrist mentality that would easily compromise further against any opposition. This point of view is reinforced and mainly driven by Clinton's history as an elected official. 4) The constant and incessant slandering and character assassination of Sanders and his supporters by Clinton and her supporters. Do you really expect to be welcomed with open arms for half heartedly accepting facets of Sanders' platform after running article after article about how that platform is the worst thing to happen to America since Jim Crow? How about how the meme where the entirety of the opposition are misogynistic white men out to ruin women for the sake of ruining women? How their insistence on a progressive agenda is somehow akin to Gore losing, and thus the inception of the Iraq war (which Hillary voted for). How about the hit pieces describing the imaginary "bros" who will vote for Trump, when in reality the entire factual basis for that narrative was a parody twitter account run by 4chan Trump supporters. Not even getting into the whole "you are the sum of your vocal, virulent minority, but please don't use that same argument against our campaign" tripe that seems to be spewed whenever a Clinton supporter gets backed into a corner. Apologies for this off topic rant, but boy does rhetoric like that above really get me steaming. It's gone on for too long and it's embarrassing to see on Hacker News.

Yver 10y ago

The other side of that coin is there needs to be a cost to bad actions. If Bernie Maddoff was to reimburse every penny he stole, would you ask people to trust him with their money? I expect not. Similarly, if a politician was against equal rights for a long time and only changed their mind around the time it was ruled unconstitutional, I wouldn't ask people to trust them with their future.

chongli 10y ago

Why should they come around on our issues Because it's not about issues anymore, it's about identity. We live in the era of identity politics. Issues serve only as litmus tests, dog whistles, and shibboleths today. When a politician comes around on an issue, they give off a red flag: they are not a genuine member of the ingroup. They are an impostor.

dang 10y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11971984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11971984 and marked it off-topic.

azernik 10y ago
Yeah. I mostly intended commentary on the Oculus issue, but the context of the quote was definitely inflammatory.