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Message: [QUOTE="pinotbear, post: 2064706, member: 258"] To expand on JB's comments; there seem to be two trends in contemporary society that underlie this sort of behavior, both in big situations and small. First, our society seems to find admission of fallibility a sign of weakness. Somehow, we are expected to be right 100% of the time, to never err, to never falter. This is crazy. This is incredibly self-destructive. And, since we all know, deep inside, just how imperfect we all are, when somebody claims otherwise, we learn to not trust them. Our default judgement of somebody's profession of success is skepticism. As I've aged, I've learned just how powerful - and, liberating - it is to say "I don't know, please tell me" when I am indeed ignorant, and how accepting and forgiving most folks are when you apologize for your mistakes. The other malignant aspect we have, that feeds the above tendency, is, in the words of Robert Reich (I think), we have become the land of "gotcha"! Nothing seems to delight folks, be it mainstream media or just the daily Facebook or tweet crowd, like catching somebody with their pants allegedly down. As a reaction to the denial of perfection, when we do find somebody falling short, it's (for at least a news cycle or two), Mardi Gras, Fourth of July and Christmas, all rolled into one. The "gotcha!" is more important than the transgression or the resolution. Basically, the dynamics of a 6th-grade recess has become our national playbook. [/QUOTE]

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