Mick Robinson

Mick Robinson

Every fail-safe system ever built has been shown to be easily appropriated and become a decent whitewash tool. Simply because the people interested in serving there tend to be motivated by naíve altruism (and thus, easily led around by the nose) or by lust for power (and thus not so harmless). It’s very rare you find inquisitors and when you do, they also tend to be dogmatic and inflexible which makes them slow to carry out a proper response.

The solution is to have a set of rules in place which guarantees that at least no one is abused by the system itself. Such rules by their very nature also allow a proportion of abuses performed by one citizen against the next to go unpunished and this is generally what allows a government to start dismantling the ground rules bit by bit.

See the US constitution for an example – there’s very little left of it which hasn’t been circumvented in one form or another simply because John Q Public is mortally scared of his neighbours and goes to vote for any “hard man” eager to sell him a strongman approach.

When you hit that kind of dissolution of citizen’s rights the only realistic option is generally to start dismantling the exceptions and go back to the original rules. Building yet another watchdog organization on top of a rotting foundation just won’t help.

So be it.

You’re right that we live in an imperfect world and thus expecting perfection is both unrealistic and illogical. However, I don’t think it is unreasonable to ask them to follow their own laws. Due to their position of authority and the powers they wield, they should indeed be held to a higher standard than your average joe and reminded often of that fact. They risk losing the faith of the public otherwise, and history shows that this is a dangerous path to go down.