The March of Dimes Syndrome | Hacker News Reader

The March of Dimes Syndrome

city-journal.org

55 pointsthoradam116 comments

> I later learned that a term exists for this phenomenon—the March of Dimes syndrome—and that the tendency affects many other movements, too. Why, last year, did the Human Rights Campaign declare a “national state of emergency” for LGBT people? Why was the election of the first black American president followed by the Black Lives Matter movement? Why have reports of “hate groups” risen during the same decades that racial prejudice has been plummeting? Why, during a long and steep decline in the incidence of sexual violence in America, did academics, federal officials, and the #MeToo movement discover a new “epidemic of sexual assault”?

Because the very cultural change that makes things better, makes the remaining bad stuff less socially acceptable.

By the time gay marriage was a hotly debated political topic in the US, things were already better for gay people than they had been a few decades earlier, so why was it a hot topic when things were better, rather than when things were worse? Because when things were much worse, there was a general consensus that being gay was wrong, and so it wasn't a topic worthy of much debate. Once society became relatively more accepting and there were actually two popular sides, then it became a hot button issue.

Sure, things are better in the US for black people than they were several decades ago, but the threshold for what's an acceptable level of discrimination has also changed. Right after the Civil War, just "well they're not slaves anymore" was a huge improvement over the prior status quo, but that hardly meant that things were actually good.

Your theory doesn't explain this part, though (emphasis mine):

> It is no longer enough for conservative Christians to tolerate same-sex marriage—now they must be legally required to bake cakes and design web pages for the weddings. It is no longer enough to protect gay students from harassment—now these students must have access in elementary school libraries to how-to manuals for anal sex. Public schools must encourage prepubescent students to explore the many possible gender identities without their parents’ knowledge. Biological males self-identifying as females must be allowed to compete against females in sports. These new causes have been wildly unpopular, arousing opposition from homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, and have led to a decline in public support for the gay rights movement. But however much the backlash has hurt the original cause, the controversies keep activists in business.

That entire paragraph is mostly a strawman, or, if you're feeling charitable, coming from an extremely surface-level awareness of the actual issues they're talking about.

"Anything I don't agree with is a strawman"

Not at all, but I would absolutely argue pretty much all instances of "List of single-sentence heavily polarised and editorialised talking points" are. You're not looking to engage in a good-faith discussion by throwing out a pile of points and hoping nobody puts in the effort to actually engage with every single one - look at the sibling thread to my comment and the disproportionate amount of effort it takes to respond without just being pulled aside to debate the minutiae of specific events.

Of course, that is all assuming they actually have some level of familiarity with what the topic being discussed and the talking points they are using. They could simply be uninformed, but trying to engage in rhetoric before learning more at that point doesn't seem like it would be in good faith either way.

(That is not to say that one should never respond to an argument that takes way more rigor than throwing it out there took, but it's definitely not "should always" either :p.)

Not necessarily.

I can recall that a few years back I was browsing some right-wing forum and someone wrote "they will force you to have sex with them" which seemed absolutely ridiculous.

Then I was browsing a left-wing forum and the concensus was "refusing to date black people is racism and therefore the worst thing you can possibly do, refusing to date transsexuals is kinda allowed but we'd rather see you do".

I had a "shit, they were right" moment.

I submit that the idea that it’s racist at face value not to date a Black person is ridiculous. If we indulge that type of view with any sort of seriousness, we’re just lending undue legitimacy to that idea.

It is no more or less ridiculous than me being sexist because I am not interested in women. I’m not sexist. I’m just not into women. Reasonable people can identify the difference. We shouldn’t mistake crazy views for sane ones.

The argument goes like this: if a sizeable part of the society refuses to date black people, then black people are in a disadvantaged position.

> It is no more or less ridiculous than me being sexist because I am not interested in women

I tried saying this but "race is race and gender is gender, two totally different things".

Who is forcing you to date trans people? No one. They were not right. C'mon.

> It is no longer enough for conservative Christians to tolerate same-sex marriage—now they must be legally required to bake cakes and design web pages for the weddings.

This is a bit of a gray area because of religious freedom, but generally businesses open to the general public aren't allowed to discriminate against protected classes, because that used to go rather poorly for society.

If a business refuses to bake a cake for black people's weddings, is that okay?

> It is no longer enough to protect gay students from harassment—now these students must have access in elementary school libraries to how-to manuals for anal sex.

This sounds like a bit of an exaggeration of what's going on, but I think normalizing talking about sex would be a huge boon for education. Treating it like this taboo mysterious thing is worse than being matter of fact about how it works. Sex is a fact of life, just like many other things taught at school.

> Public schools must encourage prepubescent students to explore the many possible gender identities without their parents’ knowledge.

And? Is it bad to teach things to kids now? Those other gender identities are out there, why would it be wrong to teach about?

> Biological males self-identifying as females must be allowed to compete against females in sports.

This one's iffier, I think it should come down to whatever the science says about what's a substantial advantage or not, ideally per-sport (and I'm sure some sports will have women with an advantage over men).

> These new causes have been wildly unpopular, arousing opposition from homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, and have led to a decline in public support for the gay rights movement.

[Citation needed] here for most of this. You really think requiring businesses to serve gay people is unpopular with...gay people?

> If a business refuses to bake a cake for black people's weddings, is that okay?

The critical distinction here is that your sexual orientation does force you to marry someone of a particular sex. It is perfectly possible for a homosexual (or bisexual) individual to marry someone of the opposite sex, and it is perfectly possible for a heterosexual to marry someone of the same sex. Masterpiece Cakeshop and 303 Creative's owners (to reference the highest-profile cases) refused to service weddings because the prospective spouses were of the same sex, not because they were homosexual. (In contrast, if a black person gets married, that will always be a "black person's wedding", so refusing to service it on that basis would be racially discriminatory.)

>The critical distinction here is that your sexual orientation does force you to marry someone of a particular sex.

>It is perfectly possible for a homosexual (or bisexual) individual to marry someone of the opposite sex, and it is perfectly possible for a heterosexual to marry someone of the same sex.

These seem contradictory? I guess you meant to say "doesn't force"

>In contrast, if a black person gets married, that will always be a "black person's wedding", so refusing to service it on that basis would be racially discriminatory.

Using your logic it would be perfectly fine for someone to refuse to bake a cake for a mixed race couple. Nobody's forcing them to marry someone of another race right? So discriminating against them is fine because... reasons?

Regardless the "distinction" you keep insisting on is wholly useless and meaningless for any reasonable person, all it does is attempt to justify the behavior of someone who believes Leviticus 20:13 is correct (the person uses the Bible to justify their actions so it's safe to assume they believe in the entirety of the bible including Leviticus 20:13).

> I guess you meant to say "doesn't force"

Yes, sorry.

> It would be perfectly fine for someone to refuse to bake a cake for a mixed race couple.

It would be legal to refuse to bake a cake celebrating an interracial marriage. Not "fine"—it would be morally wrong, and if an establishment did this I would boycott them for it—but it would be constitutionally protected speech.

> It would be legal to refuse to bake a cake celebrating an interracial marriage.

Is this true? It seems like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would apply. (That law protects against racial discrimination, but doesn't protect the LGBTQ folks.)

This is the level of obtuseness we're talking about here, that's necessary to defend this sort of reasoning:

> Well, a straight dude technically could marry a guy! It could happen!

I think it's unfortunate that the people who push violent extremist ideologies don't receive more pushback. These are people that believe in Leviticus 20:13. Some may say they reject Leviticus 20:13 but that must also mean they reject the alleged infallibility of the bible. Many Christians do not reject Leviticus 20:13 and other horrid passages. The "religious freedom" angle is wholly insincere and just an attempt to claw back some of the power they've lost. "Religious freedom" is sadly synonymous with "make it legal to discriminate against people again". This is also demonstrated by Christians trying to make exceptions in "religious freedom" to shut down groups they don't agree with. They tend go silent if you mention Leviticus 20:13 because they agree with Leviticus 20:13, they just don't want to reject it because of their "beliefs", and they don't want to tell you they agree with it because it makes them look bad.

Many of the replies in this thread that advocate for this ideology are attempting to make distinctions that don't exist (or are meaningless) to justify discrimination. Everything they've said can be applied to interracial marriage too but if you tell them that they go silent because they know they need to eliminate gay marriage first before they go after interracial marriage.

It's extremely gross and deceitful behaviour. I would prefer these people be sincere and just say they dislike gay people instead of incoherent and nonsensical arguments they make as a facade to hide their true intentions.

All of this is an act to move society back in their favour. "Give them an inch and they'll take a mile"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Mountain_Mandate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

They, sadly, want a theocracy. They want to discriminate against LGBT+ people in the workplace. They want to refuse service to anyone they don't like the look of. They want to use Leviticus 20:13 again without repurcussions. They won't tell you to that because of optics. But Leviticus 20:13 exists in the bible, the book they use as a moral compass, the book they believe morality itself is codeified.

It's extremely difficult for any reasonable person to give any of this an ounce of good faith. It's literally arguing against people who want gay people slaughtered. There's not much discussion to have with such extremists.

It's useful to remember that Hanlon's razor is a joke that came from a joke book.

Project 2025 is what they want to lay the groundwork for all this horridness.

Religious extremism is abhorrent.

> This is a bit of a gray area because of religious freedom, but generally businesses open to the general public aren't allowed to discriminate against protected classes, because that used to go rather poorly for society.

It should not have to do with religion. It would be if it is a custom order; custom orders can potentially be anything. If they refuse a custom order, they can lose money and they can get a bad reputation, but that isn't to be disallowed, I think (unless they are going against what they have advertised).

They should not be allowed to refuse to serve black people, or white people, or gay people, or transgender people, or tall people, or bilingual people, etc, regardless of what is being ordered (including custom orders), and regardless of their personal opinions of such a thing; they should serve them anyways. (They may refuse to serve foreigners who do not have the correct money; if that is the case, then the customer will have to exchange their money elsewhere first, and then this business will be able to serve them.)

However, they may refuse to write certain words on the cake (regardless of what those words are, or what language they are written in), refuse to copy a complex diagram, refuse to bake a cake with a colour (or combination of colours) that they do not have, refuse to cast a spell on it, refuse to throw it at the wall, refuse to put a 3' cake into a 2' box, refuse to make something that you do not know how to make (especially if the customer refuses to explain), refuse to make something if the customer does not speak your language (and nobody is available who can translate; although if such customers are common then it would be good customer service to hire someone who does know their language), etc. If the customer is able and willing to alter the decorations themself when they get home, they can order a plain cake (or whatever parts they are willing) and then do the rest by themself at home.

However, refusing a custom order can give them a bad reputation and cause them to not earn the money from the sale that is not made; so it is better to accomodate reasonable custom orders if they can.

> If a business refuses to bake a cake for black people's weddings, is that okay?

I should think it depends on what exactly is ordered, like above. If black people come in and say they want to order a wedding cake, then it is not OK to refuse; they should bake a cake (and sell it to them, for the same price that they would charge anyone else) anyways. If they ask them to draw specific pictures on the game, then they might refuse (although it may give them a bad reputation, and they would not earn the money from the lost sale), although if the order is reasonable then it would be better to not refuse (regardless of their personal opinions).

> This sounds like a bit of an exaggeration of what's going on, but I think normalizing talking about sex would be a huge boon for education.

You are probably right; it is probably an exaggeration and that is what it seems to me, too. (I do not have any actual data or reports about this, though.) About the second part, that is a separate issue but also probably right.

> This one's iffier, I think it should come down to whatever the science says about what's a substantial advantage or not, ideally per-sport (and I'm sure some sports will have women with an advantage over men).

That is what I thought too. It will have to be considered individually for each kind of sports. It will also have to be considered why they have gender segregation, and if they should have gender segregation, and if so, what criteria they should use (it is not necessarily as simple as only yes and no).

And you are probably also right some will have women with an advantage over men (on average it will be; but this is not always the case between two specific individuals). (On average, men will usually have more physical strength, but women will usually have more physical endurance. This is what I had read in a scientific article about women hunting.) However, it is not necessarily only per sport; some are team sports with different designations of the people in each team; possibly women will have an advantage on average in some positions but not others, and tall people will have an advantage in some positions but not others, etc.

So much written, so little said

I still think the cake thing was weird. I mean, why would you want someone who doesn't like you or hates your lifestyle to make you a cake? You really think they're going to do their best work?

Hey, Person-Who-Doesn't-Like-Me, commit to this creative project celebrating what you don't like about me. I can't wait to see it.

If a generally-open-to-the-public business refused to service women or black people or Muslims, should we be okay with that too, because hey, they probably don't want someone who dislikes them to provide them a product?

You must be replying in the wrong place. I didn't say it was okay. I said knowingly forcing someone to do this is a good way to get a shitty cake.

At the end of the day the person coming to a public accommodation for a service or good doesn’t and shouldn’t need to know anything about the religion of the owner. Why should they? What does that have to do with me buying a muffler from their store or a bouquet of flowers?

Living in a world where we have to follow all the weird -isms of each individual proprietor (including, yes, racism) would be a social nightmare and incredibly disruptive to social order. Which it was.

You must be replying in the wrong place. I didn't say anything about buying mufflers or flowers, or "all the weird -isms of each individual proprietor".

I'm not talking about broad principles and generalities here. The cake thing was weird. I wouldn't expect to get a very good cake by pressing the issue. I should think it much more likely I'd get some haphazardly-assembled, bare-minimum, passive-aggressive excuse for a cake.

No, I’m not replying in the wrong place and i cited the portion of your comment I was responding to.

I think your idea that a proprietor reducing the quality of the product because they disagree with someone’s private life is literally the problem in a nutshell, you have just said that we need to just tacitly tolerate discrimination in public accommodations. The quality of the cake should simply have nothing to do with the implicit characteristics of the customer at all.

Furthermore, you’re suggesting that since they will just discriminate anyway in lower-key ways if we ban overt topline discrimination, that we should just legalize overt topline discrimination and let it happen. That’s wrong/bad too.

Like you’re just suggesting open discrimination should be legal because we can’t stop 100% of it. That’s a fucking shitty take/shitty belief system you hold.

"The issue is not the issue: the revolution is the issue."--David Horowitz

We absolutely cannot read minds, but leaving open the possibility of other, less positive motives might be prudent.

The explanation is simple, conservative outrage over non-issues.

To the first example, it's the same as whining about restaurants being forced to serve black patrons. If you are business open to the public you should serve the public. The slippery slope is beyond obvious. Can a doctor refuse to treat gay patients? A lawyer refuse to represent gay clients? A professor refuse to teach gay students? Regardless, conservatives won this one. Business owners can discriminate based on sexuality. Hurray? Yet why is this activist bringing up a case they already won?

The next examples of "how-to" manuals in elementary schools simply isn't something that exists. Further, it's frankly cover for the real agenda, pulling out any book making even the most glancing reference to homosexuality (billy has 2 dads) or past racism (MLK existed). It's a lot of hot air and fire over books not shelved in elementary schools. Perhaps in highschool or junior high, which is age groups where more explicit texts are acceptable.

> and have led to a decline in public support for the gay rights movement.

Completely the author, a conservative that likely does not support gay rights, opinion.

> the controversies keep activists in business.

I actually agree with the author here. Yes, the controversies keep the activists in business, but WHO are the activists? The answer isn't who the author identifies.

Consider how many rightwing outlets repeated the lie "Now schools are letting kids identify as cats and poop in litter-boxes!". Which activist do you suppose started that?

> If you are business open to the public you should serve the public. The slippery slope is beyond obvious. Can a doctor refuse to treat gay patients? A lawyer refuse to represent gay clients? A professor refuse to teach gay students?

If many businesses were doing that, that would be pretty bad, yeah. But the activist demands go far beyond that. Masterpiece Cakeshop and 303 Creative LLC weren't sued for refusing to serve gay clients—they were perfectly willing to serve gay clients! What they were sued for was refusing to provide services that would express support for a specific event—a gay wedding. It's like the difference between refusing to sell cakes to white people, and refusing to bake a cake for a white nationalist event.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...

> simply isn't something that exists.

Quick internet search:

https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/news/story/2022-06...

Excerpts from the book in question: https://thedaughter.substack.com/p/34th-filthybooks-example-...

> Masterpiece Cakeshop and 303 Creative LLC weren't sued for refusing to serve gay clients—they were perfectly willing to serve gay clients! What they were sued for was refusing to provide services that would express support for a specific event—a gay wedding.

It's a gay wedding because they're gay. It's like refusing to service black people because hey, they're having a "black wedding"!

The gayness here is a property of the clients, the people requesting the service, it's not that the wedding itself was super gay.

> It's a gay wedding because they're gay.

No, it's a same-sex wedding because the two people involved are of the same sex. There nothing inherently impossible about a homosexual marrying someone of the opposite sex, or a heterosexual marrying someone of the same sex. They are unlikely to want to do those things, of course, but they could if they did want to. (And, of course, many people are not exclusively homosexual or heterosexual!)

Millions (billions, if you consider the entire world population) of people believe that the institution of marriage is inherently something that happens between a man and a woman. Just like many people believe that marriage is inherently exclusive/monogamous, or inherently not permitted between close biological relatives, or inherently reserved to people above a certain age, or 1000 other restrictions that you or I may or may not agree with. Is it illegally discriminatory against people with siblings to refuse to bake a cake for a wedding between brother and sister? What about a polygamous Mormon marriage where the husband is taking his 17th wife, would refusing to service that event be illegal religious discrimination?

> It's like the difference between refusing to sell cakes to white people, and refusing to bake a cake for a white nationalist event.

This comparison is beyond ridiculous. Being gay isn't an ideological choice, it's an inherent property of the people involved.

If someone's a dwarf, you gonna say "well it's not that they were unwilling to bake cakes for little people, they just refused to provide a service for something they're religiously opposed to -- small weddings"?

> Being gay isn't an ideological choice

But marrying someone of the same sex is. It's perfectly possible for someone who is homosexual to marry a partner of the opposite sex, and vice-versa. (And of course, many people are bisexual!)

Gentleman, the reasoning of the social conservatives:

> Marrying someone of the same sex is an ideological choice, you see, completely divorced from being, y'know, gay

This is how stupid they think everyone listening to them is.

This cake shop refuses to make a cake that is pink and blue because trans people. You knew that as it's in the article you keep linking. If this person could legally refuse to serve LGBT people entirely he absolutely would.

> sell cakes to white people, and refusing to bake a cake for a white nationalist event.

Good job comparing a gay wedding to nazis.

> Quick internet search:

And here's the followup story

https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/opinion/story/2022...

The novel was not pushed by the liberals or whatever. It was a rouge and fired staff member that decided to place the novel which ended up in the library doing an inventory. Nobody is advocating for that book to be in an elementary school library (including the author).

But this is the issue with this hot button conservative issue. 5 more seconds of googling to find the followup and response and you would have seen that the library board did exactly what you'd want them to do. But now, it's a national issue because one library had a rouge (now fired) employee.

We refer you to the Rouge Angles Of Satin https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RougeAnglesOfSat... ...

Rouge in a library is a bad idea anyway. It could stain the books.

OP knows all of this, he's being dishonest to push an agenda sadly.

Look at his submission history and you'll see similar attempts to do that. In his comments he also comes to the defence of an ex moderator of 8chan that had answers other than "no, absolutely not" to whether CSAM should be allowed on it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40385450

> The explanation is simple, conservative outrage over non-issues.

IMHO, that's not an explanation, that's gaslighting. One of the simplest things to do if you do not want to listen to or address someone else's concerns is to simply deny they exist. That's often very easy to do, because those concerns genuinely do not exist from perspective of the person doing the denying, especially in today's polarized and politically segregated environment, and it saves the effort of trying to understand and empathize with someone else's perspective.

No, it isn't.

Remember a few years back when CRT was all the conservative outrage? What about a few years before that when political correctness was the big boogieman? How about the terrorism fearmongering?

The conservative movement is one that is CONSTANTLY creating and forgetting outrages. If you've paid it any attention over the years you recognize the constant cycles it goes through freaking out over non-issues.

My state, Idaho, spent a million dollars doing a witch hunt trying to root out the CRT from classrooms. When they couldn't find anything, they tried desperately hard to hide the fact that they just wasted a bunch of state funds. This year, to help combat "migrant caravans" (A nice recurring theme of conservative outrage), my state sent the police down to the boarder to do... nothing, they can't do anything because state police from Idaho can't enforce boarder laws in Texas.

I was conservative long enough to know that that "empathy" is entirely one sided. No conservative is trying to "empathize" with any sort of notion deemed "woke". They are there to demonize. That's because the very nature of conservativism is to shut down anything that falls out of your current world view and resist change. It's a closed mindset. And it's one that conservative commentators exploit readily.

Once you see the pattern of conservative outrage, you can't unsee it. It's literally been a part of our modern political scene for decades (even centuries). It's nothing more than warmed over John Birtch society tripe.

The author of this article evidently is ignorant to the current state of the world. Simply having the existence of a group become no longer illegal doesn't mean that rights are guaranteed at all. Groups advocating for women's and LGBTQI rights have continued to exist despite advances because groups working to undo everything they have achieved also continue to exist. There is obvious evidence of this - women's and LGBTQIA rights have gone backwards definitively both in the US and UK and are unambiguously in a much worse state than they were 10 years ago.

This is quasi-intellectual bullshit written by a contrarian who fails to identify that social systems are dynamic, and evidently has a bias informing this (cough cough, certain pejorative terms throughout). This is spun as some sort of centrist triumph, but this is really the true voice of regression - if we stop advocating for the rights of groups who actively have their rights under attack by others, they will simply lose whatever has been achieved.

It is a somewhat interesting point w.r.t. the Dimes syndrome itself in whatever limited cases it might actually apply, however I would argue that this article is working overtime to misappropriate the term to advocate for silencing progress (while not ever implying that anti-rights groups should be seen the same).

This is one of a large number of carefully crafted policy pieces disguised as a wide range of things all brought to the US public eye by The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy...

    The author of the article is writing this 

    for a conservative think tank

    started by a CIA director.

ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40712550#40713116

The whole thing is ridiculous and cartoonish. The main thrust behind the author's litany of complaints seems to be: (and I'm guessing the author hasn't been the subject of a whole lot of discrimination)

Are you gay? Black? Woman trying to prevent sexual violence? Interested in preventing smoking or reducing birth defects? Stop and look around, things are better now! Don't worry or complain any more, those problems were already taken care of!

The timeless "get a job" argument.

Seemed pretty obvious reading it. I don't understand why this isn't flagged on Hacker News for multiple reasons, and I'm disappointed it isn't.

The thesis more or less works for any institution. It doesn't work outside of those bounds, like for MeToo and BLM. It's interesting how it's somehow a progressive issue. "Why have reports of “hate groups” risen during the same decades that racial prejudice has been plummeting?" Perhaps because expectations have risen, and perhaps because there was no one to report to earlier that would listen. Anyone who thinks racism isn't still widespread hasn't listened to raw thinking of many Americans, and didn't watch Charlottesville in 2017.

> Perhaps because expectations have risen, and perhaps because there was no one to report to earlier that would listen.

There's also backlash, especially as the formerly-oppressed become much more visible.

I mean its a conservative one too - look at the moving goalposts to the right on Abortion, the right keeps demanding more and more stringent controls, gun rights too.

Its an activist problem more than anything else.

Even for religion. In one of the yeshivas in the upper west side of Manhattan, they painted longer sleeves on a photograph of the founding rabbi’s wife because it doesn’t comply with current modesty rules.

It's not the same problem, or any problem. The OP is a reactionary grasping at straws.

Anti racism activists want to end racism, not reduce it.

Anti abortion people want to end abortion, not reduce it.

It's different from March of Dimes people stuck looking for something new to do when no one has polio anymore.

The complaint that progressives move one to a new issue once they solve (or obsolete) one issue isn't some sort of weird disorder, it's reflecting the reality that one person can't solve every problem at the same time.

Also, "March of Dimes Syndrome" was invented by the Federalist, a zero credibility rag.

https://thefederalist.com/2016/09/21/social-justice-warriors...

This OP is reactionary regressive grossness, trying to smear people who are trying to solve problems.

Isn’t the right wing think tank and activism industry just as vulnerable to this self licking ice cream cone phenomenon as things on the left?

Also witness the alt-right edgelords who made a name for themselves in the mid 20-teens Pepe the frog era try to stay relevant.

This at its core is the problem with activism, be it left or right - what do you do once you 'solve' the cause you set out to solve?

The answer is very rarely "ride off into the sunset" - often its moving goalposts.

Put more charitably, there are always problems facing society

It does seem like there's a qualitative difference between that framing and its parent comment: there are always problems facing society, but once activists have organized around a specific category of problem, they seem to react to success by intensifying within that category rather than diversifying their efforts to address whatever's next-most-pressing on the overall list of issues.

Yeah - this is my point precisely.

And: people want things to keep improving, for themselves and others.

I strongly disagree. Problems always exist, and new ones pop up app the time. And organizing people to advocate for fixing the problems they face is a job that's worth doing in any society.

You would never accept this logic for programmers. Should they just give up their salaries once the product is good enough?

And not even once the product is good enough. It’s like suggesting devs should quit after closing a single ticket.

It seems like you (and the author of this pretty blatant propaganda) are assuming the very strange and unfounded premise that most activists believe that there is exactly one problem with the world worth solving.

Of course activists move onto the next problem once the problem they’ve been focusing on is solved. Similarly, I brush my teeth once I get out of the shower. I haven’t “moved the goalposts”; I’m just attending to the next priority.

I don't classify groups like the United Way as activist organization - they are an organization that are broadly focused on making things better, rather than single focus organization, which have to pivot (or move goal posts) once they reach the ends of their goals.

> It seems like you (and the author of this pretty blatant propaganda) are assuming the very strange and unfounded premise that most activists believe that there is exactly one problem with the world worth solving.

But this is exactly how it works. Very few activists are activists "for good causes in general", most of them identify themselves with a very narrow set of issues and build their identity around that.

We’re just arguing anecdotes at this point, but I’ve known a lot of left wing activists, and I have never met one who only cared about a narrow set of issues. In fact, the more typical failure mode is wanting to fight on so many fronts at once that they seem to struggle to focus.

This is like saying, "Isn't it curious that after the Emancipation Proclamation, those same abolitionists then argued for granting citizenship to former slaves, and then after winning that, they switched to demanding they also be allowed to vote?"

That's not a "syndrome"; it's three righteous and related causes advocated for in series because social progress happens one step at a time and activitism is often most effective if performed this way.

Is this not a renaming or specialized case of the Iron Law of Institutions? Any non-profit, government, or commercial organization foremost concern is preserving the institution. If solving a problem (like GE creating a lightbulb that never burns out) would reduce the important/power of the people in the organization, then that path is avoided at all costs.

I work in the not for profit internet governance space, and we frequently discuss the "shirky principle" -Because we see signs of it all the time.

Arguably they are different things.

Shirky principle states that stakeholders will prefer solutions that keep them relevant, over solutions that would solve the problem conclusively, but in a manner that makes their existence no longer relevant.

This seems to suggest instead a tendency to solve the problem in a way that is conclusive, and thus indeed making them less relevant, but then trying to impose continued relevance by trying to overstate the importance of any remaining and ultimately trivial aspects of the problem. Which is an equally intetesting angle to consider.

I have to say though, even in the latter case, the name chosen is unfortunate, since the organisation it refers to seems to have actually done the right thing after polio was eradicated: they went after other problems (as opposed to keep campaigning about polio).

What a blast from the oast. I have not heard Clay Shirky in a long time. Did he stop writing?

He moved into the Uni sector, according to Wiki.

This is propaganda belittling social causes and ignoring societal decline. Not everything gets better always. Why is this on HN?

It can be a flawed analysis without being propaganda and ignoring societal decline (as the definition of decline and progress itself is debatable).

I do think the fact that humans build up careers and aren't just going to roll over and stop working or switch careers when it would be prudent for society is a good thing to note. Just as career activists move from one cause to another, so too do programmers

Articles can be, sure.

This specific article is a propaganda piece, commissioned, paid for, and disseminated by The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

I won't argue with their right to spread their message, policies, and to engage in marketing exercises, but this is very much their work. As a matter of cold fact, not opinion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy...

Because it was posted by someone who didn't know (or did know) that the mag is wallpaper for The Manhattan Institute.

ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Journal

ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Casey#Return_to_pri...

Reading it for me it is clearly propaganda. I didn’t even know it’s link to politics until I read HN comments. The targeted social causes and logic hoop-jumping alone in the article is a pretty obvious sign IMO.

It is true that I don’t this publication. I also don’t know the author or what The Manhattan Institute is. In general unless a piece of text is asking me to take something on faith or I am unable to reason with it I don’t care in the slightest who wrote it, where it was published or what their affiliations are.

> In general unless a piece of text is asking me to take something on faith

The longer I live the more I realize I don't know. For me it means I have to have some trust in the people communicating with me - that they're operating in good faith. More so when their comms are persuasive arguments.

Without my trust + their forthrightness, I have to expend significant time and energy parsing and vetting their statements - for little practical benefit.

Isn’t this a variant of Parkinson’s law: agendas expand to occupy the activists available?

> I later learned that a term exists for this phenomenon—the March of Dimes syndrome—

I'm having trouble determining where this term was actually coined. In my search so far, it seems to certainly be popularized entirely by this author quite recently. I'd like a counterexample if anyone has one, because this smells.

The publication seems to be Pink Slime.

It's a facade for a conservative think-tank, started by William Casey, CIA director under Ronald Reagan.

The name and format are designed to mimic local journalism.

John Marion Tierney is an American journalist and a contributing editor to City Journal, the Manhattan Institute's quarterly publication.

City Journal is a public policy magazine and website, published by the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research

ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tierney_(journalist)

ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Journal

Related, found after I saw him opining on 'activists moving goalposts':

(2004) https://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_problem_with_john_ti...

(2011) https://slate.com/human-interest/2011/02/what-the-new-york-t...

The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is an American conservative think tank focused on domestic policy and urban affairs. It was established in Manhattan in 1978 by Antony Fisher and William J. Casey.

William Joseph Casey was an American lawyer who was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1981 to 1987.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy...

ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Casey

Search for "March of Dimes Syndrome" on Wikipedia and the topic does not exist. But now it can. The first paragraph if published on wikipedia would be loaded with [citation needed] as in 'this claim needs references to reliable sources'.

Whatever else you think this is doing, it is conflating two very different situations:

1. Someone gets good at solving a certain kind of problem and decides to find more of those problems to solve after the first successes. Like someone who saves a life and decides to become a paramedic.

2. Someone who gets good at solving a problem and keeps refusing to believe that the problem is solved, becoming ever more picky. Like someone who saves a life and then stalks that person, nagging them about doet and exercise.

I don’t see that the first one is a “syndrome.” It’s perfectly reasonable for the March of Dimes to adopt a new cause.

Weird to post an article decrying the concept of pivoting on a news site for tech startups, but sure, it's the leftists' fault.

Pivoting when it comes to profit-seeking is substantially different than pivoting when it comes to solving a grievance. For example, when I complain to my bank about a fee or a bad customer service experience, after it's solved, I don't come back and say "Well actually...". On the other hand, if I sell something to someone, I might come back and say "Here's a new thing...".

Category error.

Unless there are more relevant things to complain about to your bank. Just because they resolved you fee doesn't mean you aren't going to complain also about an unnecessary hold on a cheque or an overdraught caused by an overdraught penalty.

IIUC, the article discusses two phenomena related to charities outliving their original purpose:

(1) (as you mentioned) pivoting to a new cause.

(2) increasing the urgency / direness of their messaging, because making progress on an issue causes their audience to de-prioritize it relative to their other concerns.

Funny how he saw organization leaders move to new organizations to apply their existing skills in leadership and made that into a "non profit issue". Seems like the exact same thing is pretty standard for corporate executives - it's almost as though leading an organization is a skillset totally distinct from knowing the details of the work it does.

in short, society was solved circa 1995 with the introduction of the successful united colors of beneton ad campaign

All the underlying claims by the author really need the sources referenced.

> It is no longer enough for conservative Christians to tolerate same-sex marriage—now they must be legally required to bake cakes and design web pages for the weddings.

Isnt it enough that we can no longer lynch gay people with impunity? now they want to be treated as though they are "normal"?

> But however much the backlash has hurt the original cause, the controversies keep activists in business.

People getting married want to be able to buy wedding cakes! This is a serious controversy!

I can certainly see why Hacker News is upmodding this important piece of Christian Nationalist fascist trash and even commenting on it as though this literal sewer of an article is worth actual discussion and not complete ridicule, what would become of America if bigotry wasn't cool anymore?

> People getting married want to be able to buy wedding cakes! This is a serious controversy!

Of course, and they should buy (or make their own) wedding cakes, if they intend to have wedding cakes.

My opinion is:

If the cake is not a custom order, but just one of their ordinary products, then they should not be allowed to refuse due to such things as homosexual, etc.

However, for custom orders, such custom orders could be anything and they should have the right to refuse any such custom orders if they wish (due to the order itself, not due to the discrimination of the customers) (although this will reduce their profit, and may result in a bad reputation, so there is still a risk to refuse them).

However, if they are the only bakery in the area, then it is more difficult, since they might not have much of a choice (unless they can learn to decorate it themself). (Although this is also true for any number of other things that nobody has available for sale, etc.)

About the specific case, I have received conflicting information about this. Wikipedia says it is a custom order.

As the other comment says: They did not refuse to serve clients of a particular sexual orientation. If they did so, that would be discrimination and illegal, as it should be. But a custom order is something different, as I had explained above (this doesn't necessarily mean it would be a good idea, even if it is allowed, though).

Freedom of speech and freedom of religion and freedom of opinion is important.

I have very mixed feelings about #MeToo, but this seems inaccurate or perhaps even disingenuous.

    Why, during a long and steep decline in the 
    incidence of sexual violence in America, did 
    academics, federal officials, and the #MeToo 
    movement discover a new “epidemic of sexual 
    assault”?

A lot of topics discussed around #MeToo involved sexual conduct that was not previously considered to be sexual assault.

A prime example would be the misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein. For much of human history his sexual quid pro quo would have been viewed somewhere between "acceptable" and "sleazy, but not in the same category as forcible sexual assault."

#MeToo brought in a growing awareness around that sort of harmful misconduct. Critics could correctly point out that this represented a moving of the goalposts, a widening of the definition of assault. In my opinion (and in many peoples' opinions) this was a positive change. But it was, inarguably, a change.

Zooming out, though, let's look at the author's main point:

    For career activists, success is a threat. 
    They can never declare mission accomplished.

This is the most blatant sort of mental gymnastics.

Two of the many flaws:

One:

Which of the mentioned groups can possibly reasonably claim "victory!?" The groups mentioned in the article have achieved significant gains but not victory.

I do not speak for women, African-Americans, or the LGBT+ community. But it's not a stretch to say that "victory" for these groups would mean fully equal rights and opportunities relative to others. If you think those groups have achieved that, I would urge you to learn more about their experiences.

Two:

The fight to retain those gains can never end. Because the opposition never stops fighting. Women were pretty sure they'd achieved some kind of reproductive rights in America, and then Roe vs. Wade was overturned. The fight can never end because the opposition never stops fighting.

Harvey Weinstein is convicted serial rapist, so likely not the best exemplar of the borderline behavior you're trying to describe.

Systemantics: Regardless of why they were created systems exist to perpetuate themselves.

Indeed, and very much a point that the article misses completely.

Racial prejudice, homophobia, transphobia continue to perpetuate themselves despite banner moments claiming them "solved".

As these problems persist, so to do the movements to oppose them.

This explains a lot about America today. There's a related quote:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

“and the whole LGBTQIA+ alphabet was a protected class”

Blatantly false.

Given the huge number of recent anti LGBTQ+ laws that have been created in the last few years, it is quite apparent that the exact opposite is true.

There are some parts which have been hard won, but one just has to look at how many people feel they have the right to not deal with LGBTQ+ people, even when it’s their public duty to do so (e.g. the Kim Davis debacle).

So even when protection is finally achieved there will still be large numbers of people who’ll ignore it - which is why we still have widespread racism here in the USA.

> Kim Davis debacle

One Kentucky county clerk refused same sex marriages to people ten years ago, was then jailed for it, forced to do it anyway and this is evidence that many people feel they have the right not to deal with LGBTQ+ people in all the years since?

You not knowing other instances isn’t the same as it not going on.

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/10/25/texas-judge-gay-wedd...

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/new-...

> Given the huge number of recent anti LGBTQ+ laws that have been created in the last few years, it is quite apparent that the exact opposite is true.

Something about this type of framing always gives me pause. Because lumping in the current slate of gender-assigned-at-sex-is-your-gender laws with laws about not teaching sexuality-related topics in schools with laws about who can access financial and legal marriage benefits feels disingenuous to me.

They are different topics with different consequences and which say different things about our society. Each is not simply a matter of pro or anti LGBTQ+.

And it feels like an attempt to dissuade us from really discussing the issues at the core of each to frame them all as such.

> They are different topics with different consequences and which say different things about our society. Each is not simply a matter of pro or anti LGBTQ+.

I believe that.

> And it feels like an attempt to dissuade us from really discussing the issues at the core of each to frame them all as such.

Unfortunately, yes, they do seem to be that. I don't know if that is what is the intention, but it can become the result of it.

As many pointed out this piece does have the general markers of propaganda.

OTOH, his points about Affirmative Action generally overlaps with those of Scott Alexander: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-origins-of-....

"So activists have moved the goalposts once again. It is no longer enough for conservative Christians to tolerate same-sex marriage—now they must be legally required to bake cakes and design web pages for the weddings."

The article lost me here. I mean, I'd love to say I took the above quote out of a surrounding context that explains it more fully and sheds more light but I can't. Instead I find more exasperation that treating some humans like other humans is somehow going beyond the pale.

To address this point in particular, conservative christians are not "legally required" to support same-sex. They are "legally required" to treat some people like all the other people their business supports in public - to do otherwise is the definition of segregation.

The article posits that people and organisations go from one cause to another cause after success. Uh, yeah. That's what people trying to make life better do. Do they always get it right? Hell no. But I'm glad someone is trying.

> conservative christians are not "legally required" to support same-sex.

Yes, they are, at least according to the people who keep suing Masterpiece Cakeshop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...

Jack Phillips was not accused of refusing to bake a cake for clients because of their sexual orientation (immutable charateristic of the client). He was accused of refusing to bake a cake celebrating a same-sex wedding event. Phillips was perfectly willing to bake cakes for clients of any sexual orientation, he just didn't want to send a message in support of a specific event. According to the activists who have made it their mission to ruin his life, this is illegal.

Again, they are "legally required" to treat some people like all the other people their business supports in public.

>He was accused of refusing to bake a cake celebrating a same-sex wedding event.

No. He was accused of refusing to treat a gay couple equal to a straight couple. And that is what he did.

He repeatedly admitted to refusing to bake a cake for a gay couple. He would bake cakes for straight couples without a problem. Gay couples? Nope.

>Phillips was perfectly willing to bake cakes for clients of any sexual orientation,

No he wasn't, this is a lie.

>he just didn't want to send a message in support of a specific event

There was no "message sending". He's perfectly willing to bake cakes for weddings of straight couples. He isn't for weddings of gay couples.

Dishonestly portraying it as "oh he just doesn't want to send a message" would only make sense if he refused to bake cakes for all weddings.

The only difference he cared about is that the couple is gay, that's why he refused them. This is behaviour that should be condemned, the proponents of such behaviour are not victims, they're evil.

> He repeatedly admitted to refusing to bake a cake for a gay couple. He would bake cakes for straight couples without a problem. Gay couples? Nope.

No. What he refused to do was bake a cake for the specific event of a marriage between two people of the same sex. There is no inherent law of nature forcing someone of a particular sexual orientation to marry someone of a particular sex. Who you marry is a choice; Phillips's religious beliefs tell him that he should not approve of some of those possible choices, and he has a right to hold those beliefs (and you or I have a right to disagree with them).

> No.

Yes.

>What he refused to do was bake a cake for the specific event of a marriage between two people of the same sex.

There is no difference. It's just grasping for a viable legal defense by someone who believes in Leviticus 20:13.

Phillips's religious beliefs also tell him murdering gay people is righteous.

> Phillips's religious beliefs also tell him murdering gay people is righteous.

Even if he did believe what you claim (without a shred of evidence) he does, beliefs—even heinous ones—are not a crime.

>Even if he did believe what you claim (without a shred of evidence)

He repeatedly refers to the bible to justify his actions. He's used it as a moral compass for many years. What evidence is there that he doesn't believe in Leviticus 20:13? Does he just exclude the things that "inconvenience" him? I don't understand. Claiming there's not a shred of evidence of this is grossly dishonest IMO.

He's allowed to believe what he wants to believe. However his beliefs lead to his actions discriminating against people and he repeatedly refers to a book that includes things such as Leviticus 20:13 as justification of those actions.

> They are "legally required" to treat some people like all the other people their business supports in public - to do otherwise is the definition of segregation.

But of course, segregation is allowed in some circumstances. Like a women only gym is common sense even if it's segregation, so too is tackle football being only for men.

Racial segregation is more universally decried in almost all forms (except acting a part!).

Is same-sex relationships like gender or like race or like something else entirely? We're still figuring it out. It was very recently that we all thought there was a strong genetic basis for same-sex attraction, but now, after sequencing the entire human genome, we know there isn't. So these things are in flux, I don't think the cake thing is as black and white as most people make it out to be.

> We're still figuring it out.

Not really. Some people are just still catching up.

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