Easy-to-process things feel truer, safer, and more appealing.
More quotesThe CIA sabotage manual needs no spies. Long speeches, obsessive wording debates, irrelevant issues, reopened decisions, excessive caution and referrals to committees already pass as respectable professional behaviour.
That is the bloody brilliance of it. Every act has a defence. Another review broadens input. Another attendee improves inclusion. Another wording pass prevents misunderstanding. Six weeks later, a choice requiring two informed people has produced eighteen emails and no choice.
Modern obstruction looks courteous. Every invitation has an agenda. Every delay is attributed to care. Responsibility dissolves across enough reasonable participants that nobody can be accused of stopping anything.
Activity supplies the alibi. Papers circulated. Comments received. Sessions held. Each total rises as the decision stays still. Everyone can show contribution without showing that the contribution removed uncertainty or made action possible.
“For completeness” is the perfect fuel because completeness has no agreed edge. Evidence requirements move after every answer. Risks remain grand enough to sound serious and vague enough to resist resolution.
No villain is required. One person requests clarification. Another prudently avoids haste. A third reopens wording settled last month. Courtesy reproduces the operational result of deliberate interference.
By the end, seventeen comments have been logged and three documents recirculated. The owner of the decision is still described as “the group”.