Apologies

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not quick to apologize when our decisions inconvenience people or in the rare cases when we are, in fact, wrong.  Although many powerful leaders consider apologies a sign of weakness, at the GPD we believe they are an effective tool and should be used (appropriately, of course) to enhance your image and your credibility.  Which is not to say, of course, that apologies should always be forthcoming.  We might, for example, apologize to our non-human supporters for something some of our human supporters have allegedly done, or apologize to innocent victims of our intelligence operations and compensate them for their inconvenience, but we would never apologize to our enemies.  Okay, so we might apologize to them, but it will almost certainly be a sarcastic apology, unless of course circumstances put us in a situation where we are truly sorry for what we have done or are about to do to them.  But anyway, we generally don't apologize sincerely to our enemies.

In the zero-sum game of politics, however, participants are encouraged to not apologize, as apologies are said to be caused by a lack of conviction.  This is part of what is wrong with the status quo.  We should expect our politicians to be intelligent and to make rational decisions given the information that they have.  If new information becomes available, we should not just allow our politicians to change their decisions, we should expect them to at least reevaluate their positions.  In contrast to what politics often teaches, a politician who throughout his or her life never changes his or her mind on any topic of consequence should be avoided like the plague.  Such politicians are likely to either be stubborn zealots who will ignore evidence that contradicts their opinions or else carefully constructed robots programmed by stubborn zealots.

At the GPD we are sorry we didn't broach this subject earlier, and we sincerely hope that our supporters will allow themselves and others to apologize and to change their minds over time without calling into question their convictions.  And if anyone has a carefully constructed robot programmed by stubborn zealots please take it to your local GPD office as we would love to examine it!