Yesterday's events put me in mind (as I have been on other occasions) of Kipling's The Lesson; it was discussing England's very poor performance in the Boer War (though after England ultimately won that nasty conflict), but it applies to many other contexts as well. Its opening and closing stanzas seem especially apt:

Let us admit it fairly, as a business people should,
We have had no end of a lesson: it will do us no end of good.

Not on a single issue, or in one direction or twain,
But conclusively, comprehensively, and several times and again ….

It was our fault, and our very great fault—and now we must turn it to use.
We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.
So the more we work and the less we talk the better results we shall get—
We have had an Imperial lesson; it may make us an Empire yet!

Change what needs to be changed (the lesson is political, not Imperial), and it's good advice for many situations. The question is whether enough of us will take the advice—and, of course, whether the lesson we learn is the correct one.