Changing Your Mind?

Opportunistic politicians and the frivolous media often taunt prominent people and each other on how they changed their minds about any given issue.

Politician One: Ten years ago you said that you were anti-abortion. Are you now Changing Your Mind?

Politician Two: Twenty years ago you were rooting for our war in Vietnam. Now you say that you will never support any war. Are you Changing Your Mind?

Some Corporations, it seems, in this Internet Age, are also doing that.

Job Interviewer: Fifteen years ago (when job applicant was sixteen years old) you said on social media that all women were bitches. Now you are against all disparaging remarks about women. Are you Changing Your Mind?

. . . and we, as Individuals and Families, also do that.

Son to Mother: Five years ago you told me that you didn’t approve of gay marriage. Now you are celebrating the Supreme Court decision. Are you Changing Your Mind?

I can give one thousand more examples! However, I’m sure you have quite a few that you can think of on your own. The crux of the matter is that the question: Are you Changing Your Mind should Never, Ever be a taunt, a reprimand, a shameful stance. To the contrary, and no matter what the issue, and whether I agree with you or not, you not only have an absolute right to Change Your Mind, but in many instances you Should!

The School Of Life gives us license to Change Our Mind about Anything and Everything. How then do we Grow, Mature, use all Our Readings, Learning and Experiences to become our Better Selves and help to make a Better World? To the Colonists and the Empires that supported them the one and only reason for how to create a Better World was to strengthen their Empires through Military Power and the Acquisition of Wealth and Territory. And that’s exactly what the main colonizers of our planet: England, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain and Portugal did by occupying almost the entire planet, killing any indigenous population that resisted them, robbing the natural resources and proceeding with the systematic demeaning, belittling, disrespecting and trivializing of the colonized people and their cultures, re-writing their history and trashing their civilizations. Since then and under the guise of “freedom and democracy” the United States seems to have assumed that role. Tragic!

So is the world – and are some historians and academicians – now Changing Their Minds about the way the world has viewed, written about and skewed the real facts about the colonized and occupied? And are the younger generations making the necessary connections between what was presented as Facts and what is, indeed, the Truth?

I believe that this is happening with so many Blacks, Indigenous Populations, Indians and on and on delving into their old civilizations, culture, history and how colonization and occupation presented them with a distorted image of themselves and their people.

In order for us to become our Better selves and our world a Better Place, we have to Change Our Minds about a whole lot of issues that we had been convinced of to date, and look at every issue on our globe not from the narrow focus of our religion, party affiliation, gender, family convictions or the mainstream media’s rendering of the news. This is what eventually creates Equality, Progress, Justice, Tolerance and Peace.

There is no doubt that the Rot, the Corruption and the Opportunism are entrenched amongst the ruling classes, the politicians, major corporations and the mainstream media, and that unless we seriously Change Our Minds about voting for, electing, watching and supporting the same old gangs of panderers nothing will ever change, and our hopes for Equality, Progress, Justice, Tolerance and Peace will never be realized!

Over the years, I have changed my mind about Many ideas, people and events. In my twenties and thirties for instance, I used to think that A Woman, Any Woman is worthy of my support and vote simply because I was convinced that we needed more women in power and in leading our wretched world. However, oh how I have changed my mind about this! Margaret Thatcher? Hillary Clinton? Carly Fiorina? No. No, thank you! The three are war-mongering, corporatist, opportunistic, greedy politicians who have absolutely no idea of what true compassion, empathy, equality, peace or justice are. Their jingoism and slogans, their artificiality and stridency are anything but the femininity that I am looking for in order to balance the corrupt racist and war-mongering men in our politics.

As for the slate of male nominees – I dread the thought that one of them will be POTUS! And maybe the two more slightly worth considering are Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders, because they are the only two who seem to have principals and integrity – although both of them have sacrificed some of that for expediency. However, neither of them has the required recipe for the Middle East. It is not simply because I am Palestinian, or Arab that this is vital for me. It is because I am also an American who believes that our catastrophic actions have been the reason, and the prime excuse, for all that has ensued in the Middle East since 1948 and unless this is addressed, then our wars will continue forever. Maybe this is what the military-industrial complex really wants?

The gamut of nominees seems to be hell-bent on creating more divisiveness, strife, wars and poverty than ever before. Moreover, they are either blatant liars, puppets of the dark forces, or totally ignorant. And ever since our wars began in the Middle East and Hitlerian words like “homeland” were introduced into our lexicon, the Republican scapegoating of Muslims (exact replica as the scapegoating of Jews by Hitler) became acceptable and then, with the election of President Obama, seems to have taken off like wildfire! It is, overtly or covertly, very much a part of the Republican and Conservative war-mongering agenda! Hence, there is not one choice that encourages me to be optimistic and enthusiastic about the future.

I thought that the United States, having gone through the miserable political landscape of its neo-colonialist endeavors, would have, by now, produced a more intelligent and sane group of nominees to lead us into the future; a future that I am certainly not worried about for myself and the few more productive years ahead of me, but one in which my children and grandchildren have to navigate through and survive.

To the contrary, it seems that the more perilous our world is becoming the more rancorous, fanatic, shrill and worrisome become our politics and policies. It is time, in the United States and across the world, to have an upheaval that will send shock waves throughout our societies: shock waves that will shake things up in the corridors of power.

Perhaps we could follow in the footsteps of some of the European nations and Change Our Minds by upsetting all the expectations and trends of the past and pulling a Jeremy Corbyn coup on our elected officials? It really isn’t treason, or a wasted vote to look into other candidates! It’s simply that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats give us permission to do that. Should they decide, or should we? Think about it! Think alternatives! Think possibilities!

So in the present US election cycle, more than at any other in my lifetime, I am observing a political landscape that is actually quite scary and ominous! Might the United States then Change Its Mind about the way it has been conducting its domestic and international policies? Yes? Or, will it be as the Irish soldiers sang on their way back home to Ireland after fighting in WW1: It’s a Long Way to Tipperary? Frightening!