The Hippo in the Room

The investigation into irregularities is continuing - sound familiar? Nothing much will come of the investigation however - also familiar? Oh sure, someone or another will lose a job, someone or another will receive a reduced prison sentence, and someone or many will write a book that needs promoting on numerous talk shows. What's stopping us from taking matters into our own hands when organizations are too big to fail, ringleaders are too powerful to be brought down, and double agents are too important to be transparent?

I did not have to be an aspiring football coach to know how difficult it is to disregard my father's advice. Even though I was not good at math like my father, I took his advice to major in accounting in college. It was fine in theory, but my grades suffered when I had to actually put numbers in columns. A father should be able to help his son plan for the future, but not a future of dishonesty toward self and others. Luckily, I was able to switch majors without delaying graduation. But, for one son now made notorious for not going to the police to report an observed child molestation, there has been untold suffering brought to an alma mater.

Would taking matters into his own hands, instead of abiding by sports protocol, have proved any more effective? Not, it seems, when prosecutors and judges alike are recusing themselves from a case of which they are too closely aligned to be impartial. When everyone, including law enforcement, is crazy about a state university's football personnel, can the inmates be trusted to manage the asylum? Too big, too powerful and too important is sadly the answer when you're in league with the big boys.

The answer and result was much the same for what has been called "India's 9/11". An American mother's reluctance to act on her son's training and aspiration as a double agent kept him from coming clean about the terrorist plot on Mumbai. In addition, the ringleader of that international news event, who is known by name and recorded giving the order to kill hostages, is too powerful to wrestle from Pakistan's protection. Pakistan, of course, is too important to American interests to make much of its lack of transparency regarding a terrorist attack on our major ally's soil. And similarly, law enforcement dropped the ball when it failed to follow up on numerous reported suspicions of the double agent being tied to the terrorist plot. In all, we have the international version of undo suffering caused by flagrant dishonesty verging on hypocracy.

So what are concerned citizens to do about the hippo in the room, so to speak? Well, I can picture occupying spaces too big to fail, circling and isolating security forces too powerful to be brought down, and leaking classified information on those too important for transparency. Funny, I don't even have to guess what such a response would generate from law enforcement officers and judges. They would be right on the problem - and right on you for that matter.