i framed what i said pretty tightly. this is far from the only such information concerning the professional/permanent levels of state being out of touch in problematic ways...and if you think about the Problem that's raised by the release of this material, it originates with and goes back to the middle-to-upper levels of the state department, so to political appointees and the permanent staffs.
in the blog entry, the case is clear cut. in many other situations, it's not so. there are good people who do good work. there are people who lack language skills required to do more than skim over the surface of where they are, to sort out true from false and so forth. it's a problem, but it's a problem for anyone working for any government, really.
i spent a few years living in france. it took quite a while to begin to figure out how folk actually live and the longer i was there the less i knew (because the modes of generalizing i started with no longer works and because i knew actual people instead of types...you know the drill...) so maybe there's a problem with rotating people through assignments.
this is not an everything sucks line of argument btw. it is a speculative line that's aimed at trying to understand something of the chicken little act we've been getting since monday, particularly from those professionals of chicken little on the right.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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