Two of our reviews this month illustrate well the wisdom of “waiting till the dust settles” before judging a situation. The first review is of Amanda Knox’s memoir, which recounts her accusation and imprisonment for the gruesome 2007 murder of a flatmate—a crime of which she was entirely innocent. At the time, from my recollection, many were convinced that Knox was an intensely evil young woman. Nearly two decades and one acquittal later, it turns out not only that she was not guilty and not intensely evil but also that—at least judging from her memoir—she possessed the depth of personality to draw goodness and meaning from her four years of incarceration in Italy.
The second review is of In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us, an investigation into the wisdom of the restrictions adopted in the United States during the pandemic. The authors are highly critical of the measures implemented: the prolonged school closures; the class bias, which benefited the wealthy; the creation of socially damaging isolation; and more—all of which were mirrored here in Ireland. As the reviewer, Tim O’Sullivan, observes, “It is obviously easier—albeit very important—to offer an academic critique after a crisis than to decide on policies for a nation in real time during a national and international emergency and in an atmosphere of global panic.”
Certainly, mistakes made in the heat of a global emergency may be forgivable, but failing to analyse and learn from them once the dust has settled is not. One can only hope that our politicians and public policy experts will not lack this basic wisdom. And yet a worrying thought intrudes: for some, the deeply flawed foray into Chinese-style social engineering during the Covid years might be regarded as a positive learning experience. We can only hope that our leaders did not find too much satisfaction in the two-year exercise of radically curtailing the basic freedoms of their citizens.