When and How Do We Admit We Were Wrong? The Rising Culture of Non-Acknowledgement of the Obvious.
What does it mean if we admit we were wrong about something, that we made a mistake? What does it mean if we don’t?
I am thinking about this at the moment because after last week’s fresh embarrassment revealed that not only was an unintended journalist added to a group chat of high-level Trump 2.0 administration officials, the usual channels of communication for such sensitive information were completely bypassed in favor of the commercial messaging app, Signal. There is the typical nitpicking over semantics, meant to shut down real conversations, and whether the plans for the operational attack on Yemen’s Houthi forces were officially classified or not. While it seems that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth can decide for himself what is classified, going back decades of precedent, military plans and operations have been treated as classified information, with the expected protocols of care and privacy. The mess that happened on Signal is far from the “nothing burger” MAGA defenders would have you believe.
The established place for sharing attack plans that include the time, place and type of weapons used, as took place in the Signal chat, would be a sensitive compartmentalized information facility, or SCIF. A SCIF is a secured place, usually a room with a heavy door and lock that has been swept for listening devices. Another hallmark of proper procedures of high level operational conversations: There are written communications with specific classification markings, not an emoji-laden phone chat that is set to disappear. The White House, the intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense all have their own secure electronic systems, including ones with telecommunication capabilities. In other words, not everyone needs to be physically close for something resembling private intelligence sharing to happen.
(Can I say how discombobulating it is for someone like me to be researching the norms of military action communications but here we are. I mean, someone has to speak to this and the usual lot are, predictably, radio silent, just as they were when Donald Trump repeatedly insulted John McCain, a POW and one of their own.)
In the aftermath of the news getting out about this security breach, it’s important to address the disinformation of the downplayers. What marked that Signal chat as a conversation that should have been treated as one with classified information? According to people with actual security and intelligence backgrounds, much of it. Hegseth shared the times that the planes were taking off, the kinds of planes that were deployed and when the bombs were dropping. The chat also revealed the name of an intelligence officer whose identity may have been secret. (Oopsies but for all we know, Musk and his Doge bros may have deep-sixed that position already.)
What I really want to draw attention to, though, is their absolute refusal to admit to a mistake. It’s unnerving, isn’t it? Not just a refusal to admit it, but instead of accountability, switching the goal posts immediately to a vilification of the character, reputation and professionalism of Jeffrey Goldberg, the journalist who did nothing wrong but unknowingly be added to a private high-level administration chat. Once determining that it was not a hoax and it was a real chat he’d been mistakenly added to, the journalist recused himself. After playing (?) dumb for a bit, immediately, as if by rote habit, the Commander-in-Chief launched into attack mode, calling the Editor-in Chief of The Atlantic a “loser” and a “sleazebag,” also disparaging the publication he works for, and Hegseth called Goldberg “deceitful and highly discredited.” Talk about shooting the messenger.
Did Goldberg get added to a high security phone chat he shouldn’t have been? Yes. Did Goldberg himself lie or otherwise deceive to hack his way into that chat? No. Are they attacking him rather than admitting that they made a mistake? Of course. We already endured Trump 1.0; we know that this is their standard mode of operation. They will admit to no mistakes and those pointing them out will be assailed, condemned and slandered from the biggest bully pulpits in the world.
This fortress of impenetrability with regard to answering for oneself and one’s actions isn’t unique to the Trump regime (I think back to the Reagan Iran-Contra scandal when I was in college, and Karl Rove’s golden rule that “if you’re explaining, you’re losing” comes to mind), but this administration has certainly supercharged it. What I am noticing, though, in my personal life and anecdotally, is this attitude of being above reproach and deflecting to new delusional levels has rippled out to his base of supporters. This is also nothing new but it’s the deepening of digging one’s heels in once it should be abundantly clear that a mistake was made that brings it to a new level of fantastical delusion and how the ripple effect of this doubling down to his base has also been supercharged in the Trump 2.0 era.
This means deflection ensues. This means gaslighting has a field day. This means dishonesty and deceit flourish. This means families, friendships and other relationships fracture, collapsing under the weight of what remains unspoken. Keep in mind, I am not even asking for apologies. That’s a lot more of a heavy lift as it is so much more difficult for the ego. The acknowledgement can’t even happen. If a simple acknowledgement — I screwed up — of what is plainly obvious is a bridge too far, what hope do we have for any real analysis of and correction of mistakes? Very little. It becomes a nonstarter. We’ve reached a dead-end, or at least a cul-de-sac where circular opinions-versus-facts arguments continue ad nauseam.
When we no longer have an agreed upon objective reality of what has occurred — just the facts, no filler — we simply stop trying to find common ground because what can be agreed upon is so insignificant. We must try to get there, though, because the path to amending requires an honest, simple acknowledgement as a trailhead. Not groveling. Not self-flagellation. Simple, straightforward acknowledgement.
If you think denying the admission of a mistake makes you look strong, smart, capable and courageous, you are wrong. It exposes you as being stubborn and scared. As someone who has screwed up many times and has had to own this many times, I can empathize. It’s not fun but it is far worse to be holed up in your fortress of impenetrability because, I can promise you, when the dust settles and you have to sort through the rubble of the relationships that have crashed and burned against those walls because a simple acknowledgement couldn’t be made, you will regret it much more. That is hard to come back from, of course.
Mistakes happen, yes. Big mistakes and small ones. Intentional and unintentional ones. No one is impervious to making them. What matters, though, is being willing to take that first step away from protecting your ego and towards an honest admission. If we cannot first acknowledge reality, quite frankly, we are doomed.
Marla Rose is cofounding partner of VeganStreet.com.
