I read that the blue paint is peeling off the Lincoln Memorial's Reflecting Pool, and that our current President has declared it the work of vandals. Now, I have spent enough years in this country to know that we Americans possess a peculiar talent: the ability to mistake our own carelessness for sabotage, and our negligence for persecution. It is a comfort to believe that our troubles come from enemies rather than from the simple fact that we stopped paying attention. A man whose paint is peeling does not like to think he merely forgot to maintain what he owns.

The Reflecting Pool is not a private bathtub. It belongs to the people—or so we say on the Fourth of July, when speeches flow like cheap whiskey and nobody really means a word of it. This pool has reflected the sky above Washington for a hundred and ten years, and it has stood as a symbol of something Americans pretend to care about: the idea that we built something greater than ourselves, something meant to last. When that symbol cracks and peels, when the paint—ordinary blue paint—abandons its post like a tired soldier, the honest response would be to ask ourselves: Who stopped watching? Who decided that maintenance was beneath our dignity?

But that is not the American way. The American way is to find a villain. A vandal serves us well because it flatters our sense of victimhood. It allows us to feel besieged and righteous at once. The truth—that public monuments require the steady, unglamorous work of care; that democracy itself cannot survive on sentiment alone but demands the dull devotion of every citizen—is too hard to bear. So we blame unknown enemies. We shake our fists at the darkness. We do anything but pick up a paintbrush.

The Reflecting Pool will be repaired, no doubt, and some official will cut a ribbon and make a speech. But nothing will have changed. For this is not really a story about paint or vandalism. It is a story about a people who have grown too busy, too angry, and too convinced of their own importance to notice that the things they claim to cherish are falling to pieces. We broke it ourselves. The only question is whether we have the courage to admit it.