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I think the reality is much less agenda-based and much more depressing: a lot of bureaucrats couldn’t give two shits about their job and are just there to put in the minimum required effort to get their paycheck, without regard for who they might hurt along the way.

Certainly sounds like what happened here - a bored, lazy bureaucrat scanning the application for a heading and tossing it in the bin when they didn’t find it.

I’d far prefer a bureaucracy where the employees cared, even if it was caring about the “wrong” reasons.