As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today.
What have you changed your mind on?
This is a tough question. Obviously, there are things that Iâve changed about over the course of my life. I think that perhaps the greatest changes Iâve made – and granted this is one that I made from being a young kid to becoming an adolescent – is the tectonic shift in my political views for once being in conservative Reagan era Warhawk, into an progressive, bleeding-heart liberal.
I know Iâve mentioned it before, but I was very much a child of the 80s. Born in 1974 I very grew up and came of age during that decade that followed the 1970s. As a kid one of my favorite toy / comic book / cartoon lines was GI Joe. At the time, I like them because they were action, packed, colorful characters who played out the ânever-ending struggle of good versus evilâ
At the same time, the characters waved American flags and extolled the virtues of American values. We tried looking for things like that in the real world, a lot of Americans thought they found that in Ronald Reagan. Of course, these are the same people who didnât realize that âBorn in the USAâ was never a song about patriotism, but rather a song about disillusionment of American values.
Then something happened as I got into my teenage years. Like everything else in the world, I started to look at things differently. Iâm sure a lot of it had to do with the fact that we were watching âoperation Desert Stormâ unfold live on our TVs. War became a very real thing. All of a sudden, GI Joe wasnât such a great adventure anymore.
At the same time, I started learning more about empathy. I looked around at the world and realized that not everybody grew up like me. Not everybody thinks, and acts the way that I was raised to think and act. Even more importantly than that, it was that our differences didnât make other people wrong and me right. It just meant that we were⌠Different from each other. I realized that we can all learn things from one another. Around that time, it would occur to me that I could take some of those best values, best virtues, the best things I see from other people and help them to make me into a better person.
Itâs not that I donât love my country. Itâs that Iâve learned that my country, my culture, doesnât always necessarily have all the right answers. I think that this was just the perfect storm in my life: I was entering adolescence and young adulthood. I was growing out of certain toys and ideals from my childhood as well.
So if you ask me something Iâve changed my mind about, I would tell you that Iâve made a tectonic shift in my political views from where I once was as a child. Maybe itâs not fair to attach political views to a kid, but this was something where I definitely broke away from things that my parents and the people around me were teaching.
Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, đ comment and subscribe to my blog below.âIt’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts
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The article: âthe rebirth of a former Reagan Era Warhawkâ first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.
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