Why is it that politicians never admit a mistake?
The answer is simple. A politician is a chieftain, the leader of his people against all the enemies in the world. And that is all.
When a community is confronted by an enemy there are two possible outcomes: first, the politician leads his people to glorious victory. Second, the politician is defeated by the enemy and his people are sold into slavery, as in driving the people before him and hearing the lamentation of their women.
Obviously there can be no glorious victory if the men following the leader start second-guessing the leader’s tactical decisions. Once you have joined the colors you get to follow orders; otherwise defeat is certain.
Yes, yes, you say. That was then, but this is now.
No doubt. But that is why Carl Jung invented his archetypes notion. Underneath our conscious minds there are all kinds of unconscious things going on in our brains, various instincts and emotions and programmed responses to events. And one of them is the “collective unconscious.”
One of those archetypes manifests in men when there is a crisis. Then men rush to join the colors. Or, in response to a hurricane, they join together in the “Cajun Navy.” Women? Not so much.
But women react differently in a crisis. Women all do exactly what they are told: wear masks, maintain social distancing, get vaccinated. Men? Not so much.
Notice that these are archetypal responses to crisis.
Now, clearly, things today are not what they were when humans lived in fairly small territories and were subject to dawn raids from the neighbors.
No doubt. But in the 20th century, with its world wars, the war leaders — Lenin, Mao, Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt — became the next thing to gods.
Let us take the case of the leader that led his people to utter defeat: Adolf Hitler. Suppose you were a German in the early 1940s: at what point would you, could you, should you decide that Hitler was leading Germany to ruin, and so you were done with him? Yes, yes: you could, you should be a martyr, but how many of us have that kind of courage? We know the answer to that: very, very few.
Now right now, here in the good old USA, we have a government that has utterly screwed the pooch. President Joe Biden is a disaster. Congressional leaders Schumer and Pelosi are a disaster. In fact the whole ruling class is a disaster.
But do you see? Because this is politics they cannot admit they have totally screwed up. They do not say: Houston we have a problem. They do not say: wow, we need to make a course correction. And the reason that is right in front of them is that if they admit they were wrong then they have to resign.
But this corrupts everything that politicians do.
There’s inflation, right now the number one concern of Americans. And what does President Biden do? He complains about gas stations charging too much. Or blames Putin.
There’s the contested election of 2020. Notice that not only does our ruling class insist that there is nothing to see here, but if you still think that there was shenanigans then you are a conspiracy theorist and maybe an armed insurrectionist.
Or let us consider crime. The fact is that crime and lower-class dysfunction has snowballed since the 1960s when the Supreme Court issued its Miranda decision, and the ruling class in general decided that criminals needed help from social workers, rather than a crack on the head with a nightstick, and ramped up spending on welfare. Let us suppose that all these decisions were mistakes: I think they were. But no ruling class cannot admit that. If it does then it should resign. So it blames it on police brutality and racism, and George Soros sends in his Soros DAs to end bail and release criminals back on the street.
The question of race is the same. The rulers decided 50 years ago that we needed to “do something” beyond just making racial discrimination illegal. Thus affirmative action, disparate impact, underrepresentation, DEI, and now cancel culture. Do you see the point? All the things our rulers decided to do to relieve racism and the legacy of slavery have actually Made Things Worse, and particularly for blacks, who now have a dreadful dysfunctional culture and are encouraged to think of themselves as victims. But if the rulers ever admitted their mistake they would have to resign — the whole ruling class.
Whatabout censorship? When you think about it, the use of social media to censor “disinformation” about COVID makes complete sense. Once the government has determined to declare war on COVID, and once its scientists have decided what the science is and what we are going to do to fight the disease, then the time for discussion is over. In a war, there is not time for alternative viewpoints, because if we stop the battle to discuss things then we are going to lose.
Then climate change. Never mind about whether the climate is changing, and whether that is due to fossil fuels. The fact is that the tactics and the strategy that our rulers are using to get to “net zero” is completely failing. The Dutch farmer revolt is an example, where the Dutch government (acting in response, I am sure, to mandates from the EU) is ordering farmer to cut their cattle herds by 50%. I suspect that the ruling class really has no idea how gigantic and disruptive — and lethal — its war to change energy use is going to be. And has already become. But, don’t think they are going to come forward and say: sorry fellahs, we screwed up; we had no idea that “net zero” would completely demolish the world economy.
Now, I don’t believe that our rulers are cynical liars. No, I believe that, in order to be a real political leader You Must Believe. You must believe tht the world is going to end unless we act now. And it is not cynicism, but a natural reaction to challenge that, when things start to go wrong the leaders call for redoubled effort. That’s how the leader of his country acts. That’s how he must act.
Here’s the problem. Almost everything in this world is not an all-or-nothing proposition in which the only thing to do is follow the leader. Indeed almost everything in this world is a stumbling, bumbling succession of errors and omissions. And the way we move forward is with everyone getting together and admitting we have a problem and working together to fix it. Until the next problem rears its ugly head.
So this means, in my view, that politics is almost never the best way to do anything short of defending the Earth from an alien invasion from Alpha Centauri that is going to start in ten minutes. Because in politics you can never admit that you made a mistake. And sure as heck, in the ten minutes before the aliens get here, some damn politician is going to make a mistake.