Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 25. Sunrise is 6:41 and sunset is 5:35 for 10 hours 54 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 29.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1980, in the Miracle on Ice, the United States Olympic hockey team defeats the Soviet team, 4–3.
(Update: America won again today in men’s Olympic hockey, defeating Canada, 2-1 in overtime. Obvious point: I’m happy for the U.S. team that they’ve won again, but nothing about celebrating this new victory is meant to suggest that Canada is somehow like the former Soviet Union. Some on X are making that morally bankrupt comparison; then again, there’s a lot of moral bankruptcy on X.)
In the political life of this beautiful city, there are two certainties. First, as politics is a human activity, there will be occasional failures. Second, when the city learns of a political mistake, there will be a few who sing that the city must ignore the failure, look away, and focus only on a positive future.
There is a tiny chorus singing this tune in every city, and there has been a tiny chorus like this in every generation. Indeed, even in the savage conditions of medieval Europe, during plagues and wars, there were likely in each village a few who sang that others should ignore those conditions, look away, and focus only on a positive future.
A tiny chorus like that argues against learning from a community’s mistakes and against responsibility and accountability.
If we don’t review the past thoroughly, especially past political and policy mistakes, then we will not learn from them, so that we do not repeat them. Those who say we should ignore, look away, and stay positive in our ignorance assume we can avoid future mistakes only through chance, only through luck. No and no again: we avoid future mistakes by studying and learning from past ones.
To each and every defender of a school district who calls for ignoring mistakes, looking away and focusing only on a positive future — your position is a betrayal of the very principles of learning to which any school should be committed. No one advances truth through lies, knowledge through ignorance, or science through witchcraft.
There is a second reason, apart from learning from mistakes, that demands a review of the past. A well-ordered society holds officials accountable for their actions without fear or favor, and demands that its officials be held accountable. Leaders in a free society are chosen only for limited times and with limited authority. They are accountable for their conduct in office.
If responsibility and accountability exist only for those outside of one’s faction and friends, then inside one’s faction and friends exist only irresponsibility and lack of accountability. If responsibility and accountability apply only for possible future actions, then responsibility and accountability will never apply to actual, past or present actions.
It’s regrettable that one has to write this way, but then it’s regrettable because there are still some for whom learning from mistakes, and defending standards of responsibility and accountability, are uncomfortable or inconvenient.
Lunar New Year fireworks seen from space in view of Beijing:
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