The key to renewal is repentance, the acknowledgement of error. Yet that acceptance is almost impossible to those who grew up on the belief they are better than everyone else, who have justified their power over others upon that undoubted superiority.
The normal person learns more from failure than success. But the already perfect man lacks the capacity to learn anything from defeat other than to conclude that someone failed him.
Usually it is we the public who have failed them. Taxes will increase and regulations redoubled until everyone is doing his fair share. Notice that the concept that they actually work for us has completely disappeared in the shuffle.
The trope that Communists make subordinates report while standing on a trap door over a shark tank is a joke, but only just.
“You know the penalty for failure. Comrade”