WDP — Changing Perspectives Over Time

Daily writing prompt
How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?

I used to host a weekly prompt called Fandango’s Provocative Question from November 4, 2018 through August 30, 2023, almost five years. One of the reasons I finally threw in the towel on that prompt was because it was becoming more and more difficult to come up with a new and different provocative or interesting question each week. So I can appreciate what the folks at WordPress are struggling with trying to come up with new and different prompt questions each day. But apparently they have stopped trying and are recycling them, sometimes verbatim, and sometime not exactly the same but close enough.

For example, the WDP question on December 30, 2022 was, “How have your political views changed over time?” I posted my response here.

And then, on December 28, 2023, the WDP question was exactly the same: “How have your political views changed over time?” I posted my slightly different response here.

Today, the WDP question doesn’t specifically ask about political views, but it does ask about how significant life events or the passage of time influence our perspective on life. And since I just posted about how a significant life event (falling off a ladder and fracturing a hip) influenced my perspectives on the passage of time and life, I’m going to put a link to that post here. Feel free to read it if you’re interested in knowing my response.

WDP — Political Views

How have your political views changed over time?

I’ve always, ever since I was old enough to have formed political views, thought of myself as a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. And in both cases, I would have said my positions were moderate. Neither far left on the social side, nor far right on the fiscal side.

But my political views have, over the past two decades, shifted more to the left. It started with the 2000 presidential election when the conservative Supreme Court handed the presidency to the Republican candidate, George W. Bush, even though the Democratic candidate, Al Gore, had half a million more votes nationwide, than did George W. Bush.

But it was when the totally unqualified egomaniac, Donald Trump “won” the presidential election in 2016, even though the highly qualified Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, received three million more votes nationwide than did Trump, that I moved even further to the left.

And when Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, but claimed the election was stolen and, to this day, has yet to concede, and then orchestrated an insurrection to attempt to stay in office and to prevent Joe Biden from being officially declared the winner, that is when I moved very far to the left and lost my faith in politics in America.

So my political views in the past two decades have changed from one who believed in and supported the political process in America, to one who has lost all hope in that process.