No, they're describing a particular scenario where the Political Officers of those norms wind up being a sick joke of careerism and weaponized ideology.
The Soviet Union was about equality for workers. Who could be against that?
I should have been more precise. The phenomenon the other poster was describing is independent of a particular norm or ideology. Talk of evolving norms misses their point.
I see. Yes, any norm or ideology can and often does grow cancerous and counterproductive. What I mean to do is cancel one implicature instantiated by that statement. It's not a reason to be a nihilist, or to stop holding things accountable in a normative sense, in this case as justification for giving Google unchecked free rein of AI development. That the Soviet Union preached and botched "equality for workers" doesn't make it any less important an issue, and indeed we could see every failure toward that end as progress, as in "finding 10000 ways that don't work".
The Soviet Union was about equality for workers. Who could be against that?