Salocin

Western politicians are never wrong

I was thinking about why it is that in the west, people hardly ever admit to having been wrong about something. When a mistake is made, we go to the most amazing lengths to recast the situation in such a way that blame is never attributable to us. While at first a slight sensation of guilt may exist, we quickly come to the point where we believe our own interpretation of events (and sometimes even our own facts) and refute all alternative points of view in which we could be perceived as having done wrong. Apparently, this is sometimes called cognitive dissonance.

The most obvious examples are to be found in politics, probably because that's the most public forum in which individuals are groups are constantly challenged about their views and decisions.

• President Clinton didn't have sex with Monica Lewinsky because what he did isn't defined as "sex".
  
• The evidence on WMD in Iraq was conclusive enough to mobilise the worlds biggest army, invade the country, throw the political establishment into turmoil and turn Iraq into the new crucible of world terrorism. When we discovered that the evidence didn't exist, the message became "The world is a better place without Saddam Hussein, we did the right thing".
  
• It makes perfect sense to some politicians to reduce the working week to 35 hours while forcing employers to not lower wages, and expect the economy to not suffer a cost as a consequence.
  

So what makes us this way? Well here's my little theory :

Imagine a young politician, trying to get noticed, who makes some mistake in some situation, and gets challenged on it. While it's clear that the mistake was his, he has two choices at this point: Collapse under the pressure, admit he made a terrible mistake, thus impugning his judgement and setting in stone a version of events that will be used against him every time he stands for an elected position? That's the first option. Alternatively, he could claim that, under a certain perception of events, or given a certain interpretation of the rules, or due to any number of other reinterpretations, his decision was justifiable, intelligent, understandable, perhaps even laudable.

Basically, if you cry mea culpa, you're admitting in western society that you're spineless, quick to surrender, too slow on your feet to adjust to shifting arguments and circumstances, lacking in conviction, and basically not cut out to be a leader. The honest people who seek to learn from their mistakes get weeded out along the way, and we're left with leaders who will make decisions completely at odds with logic, public opinion, worldwide interests and common sense.

Posted by nlvp at October 8, 2004 03:41 PM