by John Green, American Thinker:
On January 27, 1967, a freak accident during a routine test killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. At the conclusion of the investigation, fellow astronaut Frank Borman testified to Congress that his friends were killed by a “failure of imagination.” As he said, nobody — including himself — imagined that a test of the capsule, performed on the ground, could be so catastrophic.
We heard the “failure of imagination” phrase again last week, when acting Secret Service director Ronald Rowe testified about the assassination attempt on former President Donld Trump. He said that the Secret Service’s performance on July 13th amounted to
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A failure on multiple levels, including a failure of imagination and a failure to challenge our assumptions.
I wonder if Acting Director Rowe realized that “failure of imagination” is the most damning admission possible for his agency. The mission of the Secret Service is to anticipate and mitigate threats to their protectees. If an agent can’t imagine that an assailant could attack with a rifle from 120 yards away, said agent lacks the imagination to be in any branch of law enforcement — especially the Secret Service. Yet Rowe admitted under oath, that the imagination problem was at all levels of his agency.
The calamity of errors on July 13th is so unimaginable, it has invited speculation of deep state conspiracies from the “Epstein didn’t hang himself” crowd. Given our government’s behavior of the past 10 years, who can blame them?
The FBI and CIA attempted to remove a duly elected President with a hoax they called an “insurance policy.” That is a fact, not a theory. The DoJ attempted to imprison Donald Trump for acts protected by the Constitution. That is a fact, not a theory. Democrat operatives in various states attempted to remove Trump from the Presidential ballot, based on opinions about his motives on January 6. That too is a fact. Congressman Bennie Thompson (D, MS) is trying to legislatively remove Donald Trump’s Secret Service protection. That he is doing so is a fact. Given all the above, it’s not much of a leap to question whether the same people that solicited some unstable patsies to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer might have solicited an unstable patsy to take a shot at Donald Trump.
However, despite our government’s recent history of conspiracies and dirty tricks (which have all failed), I think Hanlon’s Razor should be our guide.
Given that the federal government’s only demonstrated competency is being a pain in our backsides, I’m inclined to suspect that the Secret Service is not an exception to the rule.
However, there is more than one type of incompetence. There is the incompetence of lacking the expertise to do one’s job — the agent that doesn’t know that an assailant with a rifle could be a threat. There is also the incompetence of complacency — the agent that assumes nobody will attack with a rifle, because it hasn’t happened recently. The incompetence of complacency happens when one stops trying to out-think (or out-imagine) their adversaries because the job has become routine. Is it possible that agents wear the dark shades, and pose menacingly for the crowds, but fail to imagine what could go wrong because nothing hardly ever goes wrong? I would dare say that few in the Secret Service were even born the last time a President was attacked with a rifle. Is that why they didn’t imagine it could happen?
Complacency is perhaps the most dangerous form of incompetence. It allows an expert to deceive himself with a belief in his on infallibility. Such a person no longer imagines that they could be making a mistake, or that an adversary could be cleverer than they. That’s when our subconscious has an oversized voice in our decision making. The choices of the complacent begin reflecting their biases — laziness, disgust, unhappiness, hostility, superiority… whatever. The complacent rationalize bad decisions with “It will be okay.”
Is there any reason to believe that the Secret Service — the institution, not all individual agents — is the one federal agency not hoping that Donald Trump fails to return to office? Could that bias subconsciously affect the choices of complacent decision makers within its ranks?
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