Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

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It's not principled in the least. Politicians knew what they were supporting from the onset, but society at large was supposed to act like they ostensibly usually do and just start putting Israeli flags in their social media profiles after the media spammed out 'they're just defending themselves' and ran appeals to emotion enough. That didn't work, so politicians are swapping their public positions.

And this is important because what usually then happens in these scenarios is that there will be some token vote about ceasing shipping bombs to Israel which are then being dropped on civilians en masse, and it'll fail by 51/49, but the Senators who voted for it will be the ones who are up for elections in 2026. And as soon as they get back in power, they'll go back to cheering on Israel, while the next group up for election in 2028 will suddenly start taking a 'principled stance', with the net result that we can just manage to fail the next vote by 51/49 again as well.

Now - if these sort of motions start actually passing, then I'll happily eat crow. But, in general, this scenario has played out repeatedly in various forms, and it never changes.

So let's make the assumption that all politicians flip-flop in their opinions, depending on what the popular opinion is these days.

Given that assumption: If our goal is to get politics to take a tougher stance on a foreign government does it really matter that much how they arrived there?

I get it, I too would love my politicians to hold principled humanitarian values and I know it doesn't feel good and it is certainly not ideologically pure, but those are the politicians we got now, if they come over at our side we could just welcome them with a knife hidden behind our back. We can always vote them out of office next time anyways, what we need now is their representation and vote.

IMO this mixes up two issues (genocide in Gaza and the wrong people in political office) and tries to solve both. But one of the issues has a different urgency than the others and I am afraid by purity-testing too hard a broad movement against Netanjahu is delayed.

If you don't want a specific politician vote for someone else next time and ensure there is a viable alternative when you do. That means you have lists who flip-flopped and try to tackle those who can be easily replaced first. But it is a separate problem.

Yes it does matter!!!

How can you expect your politicians to “lead” if they have such an inability to not only see the actual facts on the ground, but lack the elementary foresight to see what’s going to happen?

This shit wasn’t something that’s been kept a secret, it’s been widely widely documented for nearly 20 months. The base the politicians claim to represent have been literally screeching about this for over a year, and yet nothing?

If a politician can’t even denounce genocide, how can someone expect them to fight for them?

So lets say you have twi buttons and you can only press one:

  A) Your movement gains the support 
     of a politician who flip-flopped
     and now would vote in laws that 
     help ending the conflict and/or 
     easing the humanitarian situation
     The price is literally just doing
     nothing and you can talk bad 
     about the politician once they
     were useful for the movement  
      
  B) You don't get that vote, but you
     pretend to keep the movement pure  
     from an ideological standpoint.
     The price is potentially not 
     passing needed legislation.

Don't get me wrong, I like neither option and whether I personally would chose A or B depends a lot on the specifics. But purely from a "we want to achieve tangible political goals"-position the former is superior.

If this is a false dichotomy (it might be), tell me.

It’s not about someone changing their mind when there’s new evidence. The evidence was already there, it was being live-streamed and talked about since the beginning.

The vast majority of the politicians in America receive funding from AIPAC. They know what happens when they deviate from their supplied talking points, and right now the public outcry has grown to the point where those same politicians who would say they “want Palestinians free of Hamas” while those same Palestinians were being wholesale slaughtered for nearly two years, are now suddenly changing their tune.

They are not trustworthy full stop. And they should not be granted the forgiveness while they consistently either openly endorsed the actions of Israel by either words or voting to send more weapons to kill Palestinians

Reread what you're responding to. The point is that there will be only lipservice and exploitation of voters. No tougher stances will be taken, except in public rhetoric, which is meaningless.

Hardly. If someone changes there stance, and makes real change, then it won't be lip service.

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