Thread by @alexthechick

🧵There is, and has been for decades, an utter crisis of accountability in nearly all kinds of institutions on every level of society. The dangers of this should be obvious. Yet, those who are in positions of authority act as if that scent wafting up from their actions is roses.

My absolutely DNA level loathing of the administrative state stems, nearly wholly, from the accountability issue. When matters are determined by legislation, at least the public can look and see how their elected representative voted and respond accordingly.

When significant matters are left to "The Secretary shall" it results in people, whose names are made unknowable to the public, even though their names can be known, making significant determinations without any negative consequence for the harms of those determinations.

I cannot type this firmly enough: regulations do not spring into existence ex nihilo in the Federal Register. Human beings wrote those words. Human beings had meetings, so so so many meetings, to choose those words. The names of those people are known, at least to the agency.

Yet the names of the people making determinations that affect millions of people and impact millions, billions, trillions of dollars of economic activity are made unknowable to the people whose lives are being impacted.

The changes to gas canister design that make the new ones more or less unusable for what should be a simple purpose were not chosen by God. Human beings picked that design. What are those people's names? We'll never know.

Let me turn from the mundane to the horrific. The rapes and torture of young girls in the UK is back in the news because some of those monsters are going to be out of prison soon. There was an utter failure, on all levels, of the parts of government to help those girls.

What is the point of even having social workers, police, and prosecutors if those people will not stop one, let alone what is thousands, if not tens of thousands, of girls from being sex trafficked. There is hardly a greater horror that should be stopped.

Yet it wasn't. Not only was it not stopped, the investigations into what did and did not occur make it clear that the very institutions that should have prevented this assisted in it.

Here's the thing though: institutions did not fail. Actual human beings working in those institutions made decisions of their own free will to ignore the girls screaming for help. The social work system did not fail. Specific social workers did. The same for police.

The names of those involved are known. Multiple investigations into How This Happened have been done. The actual names of the actual people involved are known. It's just that those names will not be released to the public. Why? Well, the public might respond poorly!

Fancy that. People may respond poorly to learning that Ms. Jones, that nice lady down the street, told a 14 year old girl that it was her fault for being drugged and gang raped. You don't say, you don't say.

People may respond violently and we, the institutions that abetted in the gang rape of young girls, cannot place people at risk of harm! Look. Vigilantism is bad and I'm not wink wink nudge nudge there. It is.

It is also bad, and I cannot believe I have to type this, to ignore the sex trafficking of any human being, even more so young girls. Yes, the public does have a right to know the names of the people who did that.

Let's move on to the burning question of the names of the human beings who have been acting as President since January 1, 2021. I am not only weary, I am also disgusted by the no one cares about who is really President framing. I care. I care deeply. I've cared for years.

The problem is that I can't do anything to find out who is really in charge. I have no contacts in the high echelons of the US government. I cannot just up and go to DC and start asking around. I do not have the ability to discover this.

Members of the press, however, do. It is, literally, their job to discover information like this. I refer everyone to the last several years to see how that's worked out. It is galling beyond belief to hear the natterings of oh noes Biden's mental state was such a mystery.

No, it really wasn't. Tragically, nearly everyone has dealt with or is dealing with a family member or friend in significant mental decline due to dementia. Everyone knows what it looks like. Everyone. The press has only itself to blame.

It is a tragedy and crisis that trust in institutions is so low and this is the fault of Trump and his cult is nothing less than an attempt to avoid noting that trust is gone due to decades of actions and inactions by the human beings making up those institutions.

Of course trust is gone. It is insane for anyone to trust that the human beings who make up those institutions will ever be held responsible for the failures of their own actions and inactions. In fact, the civil service system is designed to prevent any such accountability.

What is my solution? How about some actual firings. How about hearings in Congress be about finding information so as to take actions to correct failures instead of hearings being time for posturing and soundbites.

How about the names of the actual human beings who made decisions be listed in news reports. How about the people getting fired do not walk away with massive pensions.

The crisis of confidence in institutions can only be resolved by actions being taken to show that the human beings who acted wrongly receive negative legal consequences for those actions. I'll get an actual unicorn first. Have a red panda. /fin