Demosophia

Group-Induced Idiocy

Well, this should come as no surprise. Michael Ledeen concludes, in a recent article about about group-induced idiocy:

The moral? Don't be surprised when the administration bungles the presentation of the Miers candidacy. They can't even make a convincing case for defending our coastline. Or our soldiers.

This stuff is stressful not only for those of us compelled to watch it, but even more so for those compelled to implement it. A case in point:

Suddenly last week at the Red Cross the call agents started getting headaches and squeezing stress balls to deal with emotional overload. It was an epidemic. This was after almost two months of dealing successfully with victims at all levels of life and death distress, without getting much more than isolated emotional turmoil. What changed? Although people tended to blame the lighting and other factors the thing that actually created the stress was pretty obvious. It was the necessity of telling people who had been promised money they desperately needed (and by promise I mean everything up to and including what looks like a disbursal order) that there'd be nothing for them. Well, actually no one tells them that. They just refuse to tell them anything about the likelihood of getting that check they've been waiting for for three weeks, after sometimes spending up to 12 hours in line at a Service Center. But the implication of "don't call us, we'll call you" is pretty obvious.

So every few minutes a call comes in from someone wanting to "check the status of their case" who innocently believes that there's some master record of cases that's available to answer their question, and that the Red Cross would never renege on a promise... After fifty or so of these calls one starts to get a headache.

To be fair, Red Cross attempts to distinguish between those who are in real need from those who aren't by limiting disbursal to victims with at least partial catastrophic damage to their homes. But the fact remains that a promise once made isn't being kept. Institutionally the Red Cross has things set up so that it can use the "Sergeant Schultz defense," claiming to be ignorant of any promises made in the field. It gives me a headache just describing the mess...

Group-Induced Idiocy: Any situation where individuals are involved in formulating and implementing a policy that their individual common sense tells them is nonsense.

Assisting people during a disaster is rewarding even when it's frustrating, as any volunteer will tell you. Being deliberately evasive so as to help cover some bureaucrat's backside is stressful, in about the same way that the nonsense related in Ledeen's article must be stressful and demoralizing for those compelled to carry out such policy. They may not even be aware of the craziness, as it slowly drives them (and us) nuts.

(Cross-posted by Demosophist to The Jawa Report)

Posted by Demosophist at October 24, 2005 11:00 AM | TrackBack