it starts like this.

“Can you put away the dishes?”

“F– No, you put away the dishes…”

Flip Flops Sometimes Help Keep Marriages Together
photo courtesy of Clif Bar

Eventually things heat up to a point where I realize that putting dishes away really is not a bad alternative compared to the other choices facing me…

“Fine, I’ll do it!”

You see, against every moral fiber of my character, ….. I have flip flopped.

And since you don’t know what the other alternatives were, you will just have to trust me when I say I was smart to do so……

Flip Flop’s have become standard attack tactics for political campaigns.  The last presidential campaign, was decided on one…..   It is rather ironic that our nation’s fortune flip- flopped, just because we made a wrong choice based on a political flip flop.

We are paying that price today.

But one must consider why a flip flop occurs.  If one is faced with overwhelming evidence that ones tack is going in the wrong direction, or at the wrong speed, or is just plain wrong, to maintain that tack in order to appear “resolute”, is just lunacy.

“Captain, Captain!  Wireless reports sighting of icebergs dead ahead……”

“Damn it,… nothing will slow us down,…  we have a record to break….. full steam ahead…..”

Lunacy.

On little things I flip flop all the time.  Why?  Because eventually I found out more information which made my original decision less palatable than my revision.   That’s all….

“We’ll get gas in this next town.   ……   …..  What?  $4. 59 a gallon,  ………  uh, we’ll go to the next town.”

Flip….   Flop…..

So the reason for the flip flop is what makes the whole difference.  If Obama or McCain makes a flip flop, was it because they want to be “more” popular?  Or was it because they changed their mind.

For those of you prone by experience to misdirect our attention to your opponent’s change in direction, you should realize that it backfires. Instead, I would  look to your position and wonder if you are only wagging a finger at your opponent’s flip flop, because your position is incapable of standing up on its own.

Had we, as a collective nation, actually looked at what Bush was specifically telling us he would do over the next 4 years…..  we, as a collective nation, would not be in this mess.  Nothing that happened…… is a surprise.

We were  more preoccupied with the flip flop over one candidate’s words, than we were with the flip flop of our nation’s fortunes….

So if you decry a flip flop here, or a flip flop there, I may comment as to its irrelevance…..  but more than likely I will keep it private and wonder to myself as to how it could be possible, that on this planet you share with the rest of us, you became so petty…..  muttering under my breath…. “‘what the hell is wrong with them,….Are they f—ing nuts?”