I agree with the idea that you can't get rid of all the cracks, and I'm not particularly salty that I did manage to fall through one of them (for a while). It's just one minor problem in, as you said, a complex system that is full of them, as all systems are.

However, I think you're descending a sort of contemptuous name-calling with the "useless hand-wringing for the sake of doing so", considering that the subject was an attempt to make a very large change to the way the system works. That change was rejected (and, as the OP to my comment said, called by many "hysterics"), but it was nonetheless a proposed solution. Now... we're in the process of a massive change of a very different type, with the DoE getting chopped into pieces and universities being threatened (very vaguely for now, since the focus is still on other areas, but I think there's no doubt that their time will come if the current admin can maintain its momentum).

In general, the populace is aware that there are quite a lot of cracks and is, in the haphazard way that democracies do things, trying to apply solutions.