Burn After Reading, the very funny Coen Brothers movie, provides a users guide to how things really work in a bureaucracy. Two scenes, featuring the great JK Simmons as a CIA executive, and David Rasche (1), as his beleaguered deputy who just wants to make it through the day, as they sort through a baffling mess which they don't understand and just want to make go away.
Or, as cultural observer Joseph Fidler Walsh tells us in words featured on THC's masthead columns;
You know, there's a philosopher who says, "As you live your life, it appears to be anarchy and chaos, and random events, smashing into each other and causing this situation or that situation, and then, this happens, and it's overwhelming, and it just looks like what in the world is going on. And later, when you look back at it, it looks like a finely crafted novel. But at the time, it don't".
At the other end of the spectrum from the random events theory are reductionist theories which increasingly dominate the political arena; one idea which explains everything. On the left it is critical race theory and its spawn, DEI, which are simply sociology for stupid people. On the right we now often see it claimed the reason for any mishap, miscalculation, or fiasco in the public or private sector is DEI and dismissing any other potential factor(s).
---------
(1) Rasche is one of those guys who you realize has been in a lot of stuff you've seen, but you can't place him. According to his wikipedia page, since the late 70s he's been in 49 movies, 313 TV episodes and a dozen TV movies, along with 22 on and off-Broadway plays.
I guess we learned not to do it again.
ReplyDelete