Were I but King of Anglophonia

Mistakes Were Made

Ronald Reagan, who was saved by the Little Georgie Bush coup d'etat of 2000 from being both the worst and the most embarrassing president in American history, once dismissed the shameful Iran-Contra scandal by saying, "Mistakes were made." He would have had us believe that no one made those mistakes, or at least he didn't and neither did anyone high up in his administration. Rather, the mistakes just somehow got themselves made. They were, you might say, passive-voice mistakes, not to be confused with active-voice mistakes, which are the kind for which someone might have to be punished.

But of course there were no mistakes involved. Evil men committed evil acts quite intentionally, secure in the knowledge that even if they were caught, they could simply brazen their way out of trouble. They were right about that. The bland assertion by their horrid boss that mistakes had made themselves was just a part of that brazenness.

There's little moral difference, really, between this rubbish and the rubbish of a cheating spouse who refers to sleeping with someone else as a mistake. "Oops, I made a mistake. So sorry. Ha, ha. Well, let's just move on from here."

No. A mistake is putting the wrong ZIP code on an envelope or forgetting to pay a bill or leaving something important on the kitchen counter when you leave for work. Cheating on your spouse or arranging a circuitous arms deal with sleazy foreign nations and terrorist groups in order to bypass Congressional restrictions are not mistakes. Those are contemptible, evil acts. And they are not passive or inadvertent; they are entirely deliberate.

Punishment

In the Kingdom of Anglophonia, subjects are required to use mistake precisely. Anyone who attempts to dismiss an evil act by saying "I made a mistake" will be exiled to Hawaii, but while taking the transgressor into exile, the Royal Transport Service will make a stopover in Antarctica and will leave the inadequately clothed convicted person there. Just a mistake. Sorry about that.

That punishment is mild compared to the one reserved for those who say, "Mistakes were made." Even the King would prefer not to think about the fate they will suffer.