I put this on a Post-It note recently:

“We live in a world where changing your mind makes you a liar.”

I was inspired by a commercial on Fox News. I think it was Sean Hannity (I don’t like that guy) blabbing about some politician, it might’ve been Ted Kennedy. He had two video clips, which probably contradict each other. Of course, in one of the clips, the politican looks much younger. Hannity asks the viewer, “Has [so-and-so] changed his mind?”

I make no judgment on the politician or Hannity. However, Hannity asks the question as if changing your mind is a bad thing — as if changing your mind is equivalent to hypocrisy.

Perhaps he asks it sarcastically. Perhaps he asks it in earnest. Still, we live in the age of “gotcha’s.”

With the current information glut, people can glean politician’s responses to everything. They can cull quotes from video, audio, and text, looking for the tiniest incongruity.

Portraying Kerry as a flip-flopper worked so well that now we have to try it out on all our enemies. No longer can anyone change his or her mind due to evidence. Any change in position is seen as political expedience.

However, you can’t blame it on any one group. You can’t blame it just on the right-wingers. Politicians do change their mind because of political expedience. Yet, you can’t blame it on the politicans for their enemies taking this overboard. You can’t blame the people or the media for perpetuating it.

Moreover, there’s no easy fix. How can you tell when a change of heart is genuine? Should we not expect our leaders to have well thought out opinions?

The second question can be partially answered. The world changes too quickly for anyone, even our leaders, to be perfectly consistent on everything. Sometimes, world events force us to change our opinions. 9/11, for example. Sometimes, new information comes out that forces us to reevaluate our positions. Geocentrism was just as valid as heliocentrism until evidence piled up against the former. We shouldn’t have unrealistic expectations of our leaders, or potential leaders.

I think that’s what the information age has brought us to: We have unrealistic expectations. The information glut has become our new false idol. It gives us false confidence, making us think we know more than we really do just because we can use Google. “If I can find this out in a few seconds, why don’t you already know it?” we seem to wonder.

Information is not an immobile god. It changes itself; it evolves. If the information changes, then I think we should accept that people can change.

The next time someone tries to play “gotcha” with politicians, don’t buy into it. Don’t perpetuate a culture where changing your mind is equivalent to lying. It will not stay in politics and seep into every facet of our lives.

Haha, okay, not every facet, but be wary.