When you said “you” I read it as you were implying that I personally was quick to change my beliefs when now, I realize that you were using the word “you” as the nation.
That’s why I responded to your post.
Yes, nation. Nations/national history/international history turns literally on a dime. What everyone “thinks” will be obvious almost never is. No one thought the Huns could be stopped, especially by a half-German army. But they were. No one (except, maybe, George Gilder) predicted the impact of the cell phone. NO ONE in Hollywood saw the collapse of the markets for film, or in publishing, the collapse of the big publishing markets.Someone else will just as suddenly shift the whole country, and probably the world, into the “next” thing-—and it won’t be someone like China. It will be us.