Flip-Flop

It drives me crazy when someone accuses a political candidate of "flip-flopping". Since when is changing your mind a bad thing? Wouldn't we want leaders who say things like "Well, having thought about the matter, I now realize that I was wrong"? And to make it worse, partisan journalists dredge up stuff that someone said twenty or thirty years ago to prove that so-and-so is an inconstant, untrustworthy flip-flopper.

Holy shit. What's the point of having a brain and at least a flicker of sentience if we can never change our minds? And how far back does it go? Will we be dragging future Supreme Court nominees through the mud because as six-year-olds they said "eww, boys are icky"?

I'd rather have a leader who changes his mind on the basis of new information and prolonged thought that some straitjacketed ideologue who never, ever, changes his mind, often because he subscribes to some essentially anti-intellectual ideology that doesn't brook intellectual dissent. People are complicated. Issues are often complicated. And changing your mind in the face of some complicated issue full of complicated people doesn't sound like weakness to me; it sounds like the sign of a brain at work.

And frankly, if I was today called to account for all the ridiculous things I thought when I was twenty years old, I'd be in a world of trouble. For instance:

* I used to hate Brussels Sprouts

* I used to think Blade Runner was a terrible movie

* I used to listen to Jethro Tull

* I used to think that Zoroastrianism was a dualist religion

* I used to think that barbarian hordes overran and destroyed Imperial Rome

* I used to think that the Battle of the Atlantic was irrelevant to the course of WWII

* I used to think that Blue Oyster Cult was heavy metal

* I used to think that senators and legislators had some vested interest in orderly governance

* I used to think that TV could have didactic purpose

* I used to think that the NEA should support one form of art over another

* I used to think that the stereotype of the loud, boorish, anti-intellectual American was a myth

* I used to think that postmodern "critical analysis" was something worthy of attention

* I used to think that East and West Germany would never reunify in my lifetime

* I used to think that automatic transmissions in cars were for lamers

* I used to think that there should be no speed limit at all

* I used to think that the Space Shuttle was a great idea

* I used to think I understood what Edmund Husserl was talking about

* I used to think that there was something glamorous about air travel

I no longer think such things. Does that make me a flip-flopper? According to American politics, yes, it does, and even worse, I'm not to be trusted with a burnt-out match. Maybe that's why American politics is such a pathetic joke these days.