Bureaucracy and Politics--The Bane Of Doing The Right Thing

This is just a random thought that I had earlier, after watching Jack Bauer interrogate somebody on 24, Season Five. One has lots of random thoughts watching Jack Bauer interrogate someone. Usually, they're along the lines of, "thank the lord that's not me he's asking questions of." You have to like the guy's style, though. He gets results.

What keeps our politicians from doing the right thing? Anybody with two brain neurons to rub together can look at our border and know what the right thing to do is. Close it. Build a wall. End of discussion. Why isn't it getting done?

There are a couple of explanations, at least. We won't go into all of them here. One is that politics prevents it from happening. Neither party wants to hack off the Hispanic voters, figuring rightly they'll control the majority of votes in this country in the next ten years. The fact this can be prevented by a nice big wall really torques me, but that's another story altogether. So, politics prevents us from doing the right thing.

Bureaucracy seems to prevent people from doing the right thing on occasion. When they system makes doing the right thing overburdensome, problematic, and just plain painful, things don't get done.

Political correctness seems to get in the way of doing the right thing. When we can't engage in racial profiling to help stop terrorism, we're in trouble. The Swedes aren't bombing our airplanes, so give them a pass. Neither are the Finnish people blowing themselves up to kill infidels. So why is it a big deal when a man wearing Muslim garb, carrying a Koran, and chanting, "Allu Ackbar" pulled out of line at the airport? That doesn't bother me in the least. Sorry if it inconveniences him, but I'll feel safer if every orfice in his body has gotten a fiberoptic camera shoved in it before he gets on my airplane. If enough of his people don't like it, perhaps they'll start pressuring their leaders to knock it off. Maybe it sucks if the search victim isn't of a mind to kill some infidels, but the rest of us will be safer. Sorry, it's just the right thing to do.

So why is doing the right thing so hard? Why are common-sense measures frowned upon? Why has the process become more important than the results?

Just a thought. I'd like to delve further into speculation about things that prevent us from doing the right thing in this world.