KEY POINTS:
For a little less than half my life I have been acutely aware that we human beings have an almost infinite capacity to deceive ourselves.
For most of us, our self-delusions - with their accompanying mental, emotional and physical peccadilloes - affect only ourselves and those with whom we are intimately or closely associated.
But for those who seek and find national prominence in one field or another, the results of an inability to deal with reality - some might unkindly call it stupidity - can have wide-ranging and thoroughly deleterious effects on a nation or even the world.
We seem to be surrounded by such people. Top of my list is the national cricket coach, John Bracewell, whose persistence with a "rotation" policy defies any rational explanation.
Surely the disgraceful and nationally humiliating defeat of the Black Caps by Sri Lanka at Eden Park on Saturday would have convinced even the most enthusiastic proponent of the policy that it is flawed.
But no. Bracewell continues to deprive our top batsmen and bowlers of the opportunity to flourish, "resting" them or messing with the batting order either just when they've hit their straps or are trying to find their form.
Captain Stephen Fleming - who incomprehensibly supports the rotation policy - is a prime example. Having played just two tests in a series we should have won outright but drew, our supposed premier batsman is "rested".
Which meant he missed the first three games of the one-day series - and on his return to the crease is out leg-before-wicket to the fifth ball he faced.
I suggest that had he played in the first three games he would have become familiar with the wiles of the Sri Lankan bowlers and been able to develop appropriate defences.
The same goes for the rest of the squad. They can watch all the videos they like but there is no substitute for time in the middle for bowlers to hit their line and length and batsmen to find the middle of the bat.
Surely it is time for Bracewell to understand that tests and one-dayers are in fact series, not individual matches. The time to swap players around is between series, not between matches. Just as well the fifth and final one-dayer was washed out on Tuesday so at least we managed a draw - again.
But perhaps we were given a clue to Bracewell's mindset in Michele Hewitson's interview with him last Saturday. He is, we were told, into transcendental meditation. Maybe that means he spends a lot of time off the planet.
Next on my list of self-deluders is Peter Dunne, the Revenue Minister who clips us for every cent he can while hiding behind the skirts of Finance Minister Michael Cullen. Mr Dunne is the leader of the United Future Party, whose policy seems to be "we'll back anyone, as long as they're winning".
Asked last week why Inland Revenue taxes producers of the scourge drug P - and even allows them to write off expenses entailed in its manufacture, such as the cost of pseudoephedrine - Mr Dunne told the Herald on Sunday it was not his responsibility to help police prevent the manufacture of illegal drugs.
"Police are perfectly equipped to fight crime," he said. "As Minister of Revenue my responsibility is to maximise income." And this is the man who insisted on the creation of a Families Commission.
Mr Dunne's response came after the national chief of the police clandestine drug laboratory team, Detective Senior-Sergeant John Brunton, questioned the "morality" of Inland Revenue collecting tax from P manufacture.
Under the law, apparently, methamphetamine producers can file tax returns without fear of the police being told.
We can only wonder at the sort of twisted reasoning that makes it possible for the Government to profit from an industry that produces an illegal drug that triggers murder and violence and a vast amount of misery. And at the mentality of a minister who would proclaim that the police are "perfectly equipped" to fight crime. Oh, how I - and no doubt they - wish they were.
Third on the list is the Parole Board, which has let another psychopath loose to kill, and the psychologist who told the board: "Mr Burton's documented improvement in conduct and release plan supports a case for a carefully managed release under close supervision."
The board, which has two retired judges who should know better, said in its decision it had "come to the view over the past nine months that Mr Burton's potential risk to the safety of the community is not considered to be undue taking into account the efforts made to address his offending and his proposed release plan".
Perhaps the board took too much notice of a submission by an unnamed woman who appeared before it and who, the board reports, "asked that were he to be released, Mr Burton be requested to pursue the course of peace and choose love".
Now that's self-delusion.
* Last week I suggested that Prime Minister Helen Clark "announced" that she had ordered greater Government activity on religious and cultural diversity just before heading overseas. Not so. Political editor Audrey Young tells me she approached Helen Clark on the matter and the timing was coincidental.
