It’s All About Guts

During the last two years Americans and the world have learned some pretty harsh lessons. Institutions we grew up with, and heretofore, trusted implicitly have demonstrated that they are no longer trustworthy and probably haven’t been for longer than we care to admit. America has a long history of extreme patience when we see things going sideways. In our traditional cultural optimism, we expect most situations to self-correct. That optimism isn’t necessarily misplaced, because many things will self-correct. But, when they don’t self-correct, we are often left with a massive problem, and correction is not easy. The best example of almost waiting too long was World War II. We should have better prepared ourselves for what was coming. We didn’t, and we paid a heavy price during the first part of the war. In the end, America tipped the scale to fix it.