Honesty is an interesting idea. In general, it should be a good thing. There should be no need to be less than honest, especially concerning important, imperative matters.
It can be abused as a concept. For some, echoing inumerable TV reality shows, just being honest is actually a useful shield to hide behind, when all you want to do is criticise, attack and humiliate.
But, in principle, the ability, and the positivity, of being honest should be a good thing.
There is, however, one group of people who ignore it completely. This should really be no great surprise to any of us, after all, to get to a position of power, honesty becomes a secondary consideration to advancement.
To begin with, maybe just the odd matter of omission rather than confession. Then the acquired skill of answering a different question to the one asked, repeatedly, until the original enquiry disappears in to a flood of alternative truths.
So, it is really refreshing when a leader is honest enough to admit they got it wrong. When Emmanuel Macron said that the French government hadn’t done as much as it should have in preparation for the current pandemic, apart from creating distinct ripples of surprise, it provides a smidgen of hope that this situation is going to adjust the world in a more fundamental way.
And then you watch the performances of other leading political figures, and the hope shrinks back to it isolation.
Every day, the British government is providing a briefing, with the lead being rotated around a variety of ministers, as the PM is not available for comment. Alongside the presumably accurate numbers regarding infections, deaths, tests, presented by non-politicians, there is the Q and A on the government performance, response, strategy.
And here we return to the standard format. I have listened to many, although not all. So if I have missed the one where the minister admitted they had got the planning and preparation wrong, they were falling short of where they should be, then I apologise.
But i guess not. Because in every one I have heard, when questions are raised about the exact situation regarding support, tactics, strategy, the response is never an answer if it would admit anything remotely detrimental to the government.
Only once, when the buck was passed to an unnamed civil servant regarding the missed email detailing the EU wide purchasing of respirators – which was, of course, total bullshit – was there anything like an admission of failure.
But, overall, they do not, and will not, accept that the decisions taken, either after a trial run for a pandemic that showed enormous gulfs between what was and what was actually needed, or in more recent months.
And in the meantime they can build up any number of excuses to backtrack in the future on promises made under ‘different circumstances’.
And can ignore the previous diminishing of those who are now acknowledged as essential. And will easily slip back into that diminishing when the crisis lessens, because, well circumstances have changed.
One glance at the US is enough to see that the country is ripe for an even greater division than they have seen to date, with a psychopath determined to play god, and pick fights with everyone. It is beyond ridiculous, beyond frightening. There are so many voices of sense, of compassion, all being drowned out by the tantrums of a child in his seventies.
On a personal level, on a community level, I am sure that the aftermath of the pandemic will bring new and better and grateful connections.
Unfortunately, I see no evidence that, where the power still resides, there is any real evidence of an acceptance that there needs to be change. Because that would require some honesty.
And that is also in very short supply.
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