On the latest Killer’s album (Day and Night) Brandon Flowers asks “are we human or are we dancer[s]“? I really like this - for me is probing what it is to be human, maybe touching on our spirituality, primal desire and recent lust for knowledge.
People seem to be able to relate.
I expect that maybe 99% of humanity know that humans make mistakes. The remaining 1% (and that’s probably an overestimate) probably live in the more developed secularist world where there is an increasing expectation that perfection is actually possible rather than simply serves as a guide. It is in these cultures, such as the UK, where the majority accept that humans make mistakes but somehow government and public figures are infallible.
With hindsight it is always possible to roll out the person that knew the right answer that could have prevented a mistake being made. The media is very good at doing exactly this and then standing next to the person concerned and pointing at it with an often snide comment. In the case it was a moral issue of some sort then an equivalent ‘holier than thou’ approach is taken. Rarely do the papers take any sort of compassionate or sympathetic view.
I’m not necessarily saying that this is wrong. It is clearly amazing that we live in a free society and the press are an integral part of holding government to account to ensure that any democracy remains democratic. Is it really fair though to ask people in government resign for accidental slips. Whether it was creating a breach of security, claiming for an inappropriate expense or a personal moral lapse - the answer seems to be a black and white resignation.
Some of these are probably for the best, but at the same time I am inclined to take the view that highly competent and loyal politicians are lost along the way for no particularly good reason other than the media saying so. Often the media don’t really have a good reason, but they can still manage to brew up a strong enough storm of moral outrage from the vocal minority to tip the scales in their favour. Frankly I can see why politicians try to cover things up rather than be honest. Being honest is not rewarded by a fair trial to determine fair punishment - the answer is a call for resignation.
To finish I’d like to just throw a final thought into the mix. There is a significant difference between junior and senior staff. The high level security leak in the police service this week versus the low ranking officer accused of assaulting a man that later died. People make mistakes either because the orders were themselves a mistake or they themselves didn’t follow the orders properly. At the top, the buck for both stops with the same person - lower down it does not. In these lower ranks, things are more confused due to peer pressure, camaraderie and mis-perception being in the mix.
At the end of the day people make mistakes. It is the role of the papers to hold the government and the justice system to account. I feel that the papers overstep their role and wrongly pitch themselves as an entity which can decide what justice is and take it into their own hands through the mass-media.