I saw an interesting comment by Peggy Noonan, key speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, theorizing about why Iraq turned out so badly for the George W. Bush administration. She said his aides and other senior government officials “were at the top of the pile, had never been losers. They thought good things would follow their good efforts in the same way study had produced honors at college and discipline had produced their professional rise. They didn’t think dark because they’d never known darkness. It was a disadvantage. To make solid decisions at that scale you have to know in your gut that history’s an abattoir, a place where animals are butchered, and the floors are slippery.”
If you take America was a whole, there are not any generations left living who the majority have ever endured the agony of defeat. So, there is no expectation of any real price to be paid for making bad decisions or indulging our prejudices about others less fortunate. Only time will tell whether the old adage is true, “in the game of life Father Time and Mother Nature always bat last and they never strike out”.
