I’ve had Olivia Newton John bouncing around my head for the last week. Not in a good way either. Certainly not in a teenager excited by the switch from all American sweat heart to leather wearing vamp in Grease kind of a way.

Oh no, the Aussie songstress snuck inside my head dressed as some workout wonder complete with a 1980’s abomination of a haircut and started singing the truly awful ‘Let’s Get Physical’.  Quick to do a reframe and salvage something from the hours of torture and torment, I came up with the title and general outline for this post, so all was not lost.

You don’t have to be some form of weird morph of Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie and Scooby Doo to know that I wanted Obama to win this election. That cat left that particular bag some considerable time ago and I’m glad it did. I don’t particularly wish to pretend I’m somebody I’m not just to curry favor. Unless of course it s a special occasion and requires dressing up in uniforms, but that’s another matter altogether.

I have absolutely no doubt that I have lost readers and maybe even potential clients because of my political opinions (especially with this post) and I’m really cool with that. That may seem a strange thing to say, but it’s really not. If somebody is so offended by the words I speak and/or type and so incapable (or more likely unwilling) of understanding and accepting my beliefs, then what more is there to say? Even if I tiptoe around their sensibilities now I’m bound to hit a nerve at some stage and risk their ire. May as well get it over and done with.

To read this blog and have any chance of gaining something of value, you must approach it from a position of relative open-mindedness. I’m not expecting you to believe what I believe, just because I say so, but I am asking you to weigh up the evidence and consider it with an open-mind.

The only other option is to read simply to confirm and cement opinions you’ve already formed. To do that requires you delete out (more often than not at an unconscious level) any evidence that doesn’t align with those beliefs. What’s the point of that I ask you?

The above goes for me too. I can’t approach what I do with an attitude that I have all the answers and I’m some Guru here to dispense the kind of wisdom that has King Solomon pestering me by e-mail looking for tips. I’m here to learn along with you, and I do so on a regular basis.  Many times somebody has said something in the comments that has shifted my thinking on a subject and I’m grateful for that.

I remember watching the build up to the 2004 Bush/Kerry election from the UK with keen interest. In particular I was amazed to see Kerry get accused of being a flip flopper because he changed his mind about the war in Iraq. I couldn’t believe that a change of heart or even two changes of heart could be seen as a character flaw and a reason why somebody was incapable of being a leader.

I have the utmost respect for people that change an embedded opinion. It often takes guts and strength of character to change your mind because first and foremost you have to accept that you got it wrong originally. That in and of itself is one of the most difficult things for most people to do. It ranks up there with admitting that you’re a terrible driver, not very bright and crap in bed.

Changing your mind means you have to accept new evidence. You have to listen or read from alternate sources and you have to be impartial whilst you do so. In other words you have to be open-minded. I remember posting once that it amazed me that everybody thinks they’re open-minded, yet we have so many arguments and disagreements in the world. How can that be so?

Over the last few days I have noticed a marked increase in partisanship and animosity between the two different sides of the political equation online. Normal message room chat was ramped up a notch or two from banter to bitterness.  I have also heard several stories of thousands of people unfriending others on Twitter, Facebook and the like.  People that have ‘known’ each other for months and maybe even years online suddenly want to sever ties over a difference of opinion on politics.

I’ve had several conversations about he election with Republicans both in ‘real life’ and online recently. Not one of them ended up with me thinking ‘Asshole’ or wanting to insert a red-hot poker up their rear end. Maybe a cold poker a couple of times, but nothing worse than that.

I understand that if you voted Republican it’s because you have different values to me.  Yours are right for you and mine are right for me and that’s all there is to it. If I’d been brought up in your household, with your parents and your friends I would probably have your values and have wanted the same conclusion to the election as you did.

Having said that, my guess is we want pretty much the same things for the country as a whole, we just disagree about how we achieve it. I’d be surprised if you didn’t want peace, great health care that isn’t going to bankrupt you, the eradication of poverty and crime as well as a world-class education system and accountability for huge corporations. Am I right?

Some people hold on to their values for grim death and believe that they see the world as it really is and others just don’t ‘get it’. They don’t understand that their map is not necessarily the territory.  Some people though constantly challenge their values to see if they’re still relevant and right for them. I was brought up in a household where both parents were Tory supporters. Not unsurprisingly I adopted those beliefs and for about 5 years was a rabid supporter of Margaret Thatcher. I shudder when I think about that now, but that’s because my values shifted as I got older and read from more diverse sources. A lot of what I see as important now, I didn’t then.

I’m not saying this to hold myself up as some form of saint, far from it. There are things that I struggle to understand and times when I think other people are simply wrong. I have to remind myself that I’m judging them based on my beliefs and values and not from some ultimate form of truth that only I am privy to. Even then it’s not always easy.

A case in point is Prop 8. To my way of thinking everybody on this planet deserves equal rights irrespective of their race, gender or sexuality. You’d be hard pressed to find anybody that would admit to thinking slavery is a great idea, yet millions once did. Similarly millions of men thought that women’s emancipation was a slippery slope and even more believed that apartheid was an acceptable way to run a modern society.  I see little difference between those and the rights of gay and lesbian women, but hey, that’s just me.

I happen to think that the election of Obama is a huge step forward for the United States of America. If you don’t agree that’s fine, but I hope you at least respect my opinion. The fact is I could be wrong, I can’t see into the future and neither can you. All we can do is wait and see and whilst we’re doing that, let’s at least all hope for the best, pull together and put our differences to one side, at least until 2012.

Thanks for reading and I welcome your feedback in the comments.