2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Hillary has spent most of her political career denying she's a liberal [View all]HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)As it's used in politics evolve most often simply means change in opinion. And it's a tool of euphemism intended to obfuscate what is too often Machiavellian maneuvering.
The linguist roots of evolving have to do with revealing something as it unrolls, as a scroll might be unrolled revealing an epic narrative of heroic actions.
The biological phenomenon with that label is the unrolling story of changing diversity, a changing of type moving toward ever increasing richness against the challenges of a ravaging environment and escape from threats of extinction. Is that really anything like the 'evolution' of personal positioning on political issues? Really?
A euphemism like "evolving" is needed in political rhetoric to get around the taint that often accompanies attitude/position changes, that otherwise would be spoken of as inconsistent flip-flop, blowing-with-the-wind or personal-serving "triangulation",
That's not to say we don't wish for people to change. As we grow from childhood to elders, we hope to become better through maturing change in things like emotional control and critical thinking, we hope to be better able to use experience as a lever to solve problems for ourselves and others. What we hope for ourselves, our children and our would-be political leaders is not that we not merely change our opinions, but that our personal characters evolve making us stronger, tempered and wiser people.
Evolving really isn't an attempt to stay in step with the fashion of the current political season or trends. That's why our culture 'evolved' negative phrases like, blowing-in-the-wind.
If we take a moment to look at the unrolling stories of this year's democratic candidates, there is really one whose personal story stands out as having grown deeper, stronger, and wiser all while staying true to fundamental belief that our destiny should be in communities that provide a quality of liberty only possible through commerce in equality, empathy and fraternite'.