CONTEMPTUOUS AND HYSTERICAL CRITICISM

Por vezes desculpar as falhas no sistema e poupar os titulares de cargos que o tutelam faz algum sentido numa sociedade liberal, altamente responsabilista. Em Portugal, pelo contrário, temos o pequeno problema de certos titulares não se mancarem quando deveriam colocar o lugar à disposição, o que começa a fazer parte da cultura de incúria e deixa-andar com que a República se degrada: «Much of the criticism has been contemptuous and hysterical. Various experts have gathered bits of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s biography. Since they can string the facts together to accurately predict the past, they thunder, the intelligence services should have been able to connect the dots to predict the future. [...] For better or worse, over the past 50 years we have concentrated authority in centralized agencies and reduced the role of decentralized citizen action. We’ve done this in many spheres of life. Maybe that’s wise, maybe it’s not. But we shouldn’t imagine that these centralized institutions are going to work perfectly or even well most of the time. It would be nice if we reacted to their inevitable failures not with rabid denunciation and cynicism, but with a little resiliency, an awareness that human systems fail and bad things will happen and we don’t have to lose our heads every time they do.»