Changing Your Mind is a Virtue
First off, happy 84th birthday mom. I hope your tea celebration is a success today and you feel loved and celebrated. Thanks for being the best parent imaginable.
Last week, I intended to write a piece about the really dumb way that changing one's mind is denigrated in American politics and larger society. It ended up being on why American elections are too damn long—a topic that generated an avalanche of responses.
The thread from that newsletter to this week’s is the observation that calling somebody a “flip-flopper” is somehow one of the most potent attacks in American politics. We collectively see changing your mind as a sign of weakness or a lack of commitment to one's ideas. That’s nonsense. It's a virtue to change your mind, when presented with compelling superior evidence. I would rather have my leaders come out and say “Hey, I got it wrong on topic X. Here's what I think now” then to remain committed to a bad idea or position because they don't want to look “weak.”
And honestly, I want to have a different conversation about “weakness” and the way it's coded in American society. For the life of me, I can't figure out how large portions of the men in the country think a 78-year-old man, coated in makeup, who can’t seem to pay their bills, is any kind of model of aspirational masculinity, but that's for a different Sunday afternoon.
Let's get back to this “flip-flopping” thing.
Why do we punish people when they change their minds? We can't possibly be this stupid, treating policy positions as “til death do us” part pacts.
Folks of my vintage may recall the attacks against John Kerry in the 2004 election. For the sub-40 crowd, let’s take a moment and recall that history: John Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president in 2004. Before running for president, as a U.S. Senator, he had voted in favor of the invasion of Iraq based on the administration’s claims that Iraq was harboring terrorists and had weapons of mass destruction they intended to use or transfer to U.S. enemies.
As the war in Iraq dragged on, it became clear that the rationales provided to Kerry and the public were false. It was also evident that the post-war occupation of Iraq was mishandled by the Bush administration. In response, Kerry became a critic of the occupation and the war effort.
This became a political albatross for Kerry. His own prior military service was called into question in a thing called “Swiftboating” and that year thousands of delegates at the RNC waived flip flops at cameras emblazoned with Kerry's image. He was defeated narrowly in an election decided by 118,601 votes in the state of Ohio.
Let’s pause and appreciate this for a moment. The people who pushed the country into a disastrous war based on lies were criticizing the guy who figured out he was wrong and had the nerve to admit it. They were able to make the election about his “flip-flops” rather than about their incompetence. If that doesn’t leave you shaking your head twenty years later, I don’t know what will.
The idea that once somebody establishes a position in public life, even in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary, that changing your mind on that position is some sort of betrayal is a really weird form of anti-intellectual brain death.
I used to think United was a good airline.
I used to think that the US was the only place people that looked like me were able to find success.
I used to think Christopher Hitchens was among our greatest living writers. For the record, I didn’t change my mind because he died (and stopped being a living writer) but rather because I grew to understand the pitfalls of contrarianism for contrarianism’s sake.
When I was in my early 20s, and couldn't afford to do so, I successfully convinced myself that travel was a bourgeois activity and a waste of time and money.
When I was in my mid-20s, I was convinced that marriage was a societal peril and that couples should instead enter into five-year renewable contracts.
Deep into my late twenties, I felt all sorts of retrograde things about members of the trans community that I regret today.
I don’t believe any of that now.
Changing your mind is a sign of growth. I tell my students all the time that “if you can’t look back on your past and think about times you were being an idiot about something, you aren’t moving forward as a person.”
We live in the golden age of data and the internet is a gold mine for people who want to educate themselves on topics. There are more books being published than ever. There are more scientific articles being published than ever. Although there are fewer newspapers than there used to be, because of the internet, they are far more widely available. I can effortlessly follow the news back in Tacoma, events here in the Gulf, and read the progressive take on domestic Israeli politics in Haaretz in the time it takes to drink a cup of chamomile tea.
I am not saying you are guilty of any of this, surely the readers of this fine newsletter are better than average. But I invite us to be careful about denigrating people for changing their minds in politics and in life.
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Now it’s time for a quick reader mailbag from last week’s newsletter on this fall’s elections. My take was — “American elections are too damn long” and your take was almost universally “hell yes!”
SB: “AMEN to all of this.”
JW: “Agree. Shorten the campaigns and limit campaign finance spending drastically. It’s a farce.”
CC noted a bit of despair in the closing: “Oh, man, ‘I know I'm powerless to change any of this’ really hit me in the feels. I feel like it's also why I often have a hard time enjoying Last Week Tonight. Every episode is a long foray into another issue many people will spend their whole lives barely moving the needle on, and that is really... deflating.”
However, there was some dissent.
I think this one from ZP is most concise: “If you want only celebrity politicians like a former television star and President, or the first female VP in history—then all the American people will need is a month. But we don't get the Obama win with a system like you're describing. We don't get Bernie, for all the good and bad, stirring months of convos about things like universal health care. Besides, what better things do Americans have to do with their time that our election season should be condensed to a month or two - watch more American Ninja Warrior and HGTV?”
I disagree but it made me laugh.
I love these kinds of exchanges. I really mean it. If you have thoughts about anything in the email, especially if you think I’m off on something, please hit me up. Maybe you’ll help me change my mind about something.
See you next week.
As always, if you have any thoughts or feedback about the newsletter, I welcome it, and I really appreciate it when folks share the newsletter with their friends.