Do people change? Yes, they do. It happens rarely enough to be noteworthy, but it does happen. Real transformation—the kind that cuts to the bone—is never loud. It’s quiet, unsettling, and often marked by long stretches of introspection and silence. The person who truly changes goes underground for a while, not to hide, but to think. They read. They question. They dismantle everything they once believed and start sifting through the rubble for fragments of truth that still hold up under scrutiny.
Such metamorphosis is not for the faint of heart. It feels like the ground itself is moving, as if the foundations you once stood upon are cracking open and swallowing your certainties whole. The process is slow, often painful, but at least it’s real. It’s the kind of change that reshapes a person’s mind, not just their marketing strategy.
But then there’s another type of “transformer.” The chameleon. The one who never believed the nonsense they were selling but went along with it anyway—because it paid well, because it was fashionable, or because it opened the right doors. And now, having sniffed a shift in the political and cultural breeze, they scramble to reinvent themselves as if conscience were just another PR tool.
This kind of change has nothing to do with conviction. It’s not transformation—it’s migration. The same opportunists who once shouted the slogans of the old order now rehearse the mantras of the new, desperate to stay relevant when the gravy train changes tracks. Their convictions are as transient as their hashtags.
I don’t know which kind Ted is. Maybe he’s the first, the rare one who actually thought, reflected, and emerged altered. But somehow, I doubt it. There’s an unmistakable scent of panic in the air among the alarmists these days. They can feel the shift, too—the applause thinning, the donations drying up, the data turning inconvenient. And now they’re rushing to reposition themselves before the old train derails completely.
They call it transformation. I call it self-preservation.