Most ironic was the image of government that was born of these experiences. As any scholarly treatise on the subject will tell you, the great advantage bureaucracy is supposed to offer for a complex, modern society like ours is efficient, rational, uniform and courteous treatment for the citizens it deals with. Yet not only these qualities not come through to the people I talked with, it was their very opposites that seemed more characteristic. People of all classes – the rich man dealing with the Internal Revenue Service, as well as the poor woman struggling with the welfare department – felt that the treatment they had received had been bungled, not efficient; unpredictable, not rational; discriminatory, not uniform; all too often, insensitive, rather than courteous. It was as if they had bought a big new car that not only did not run when they wanted it to, but periodically revved itself up and drove all around their yards. • 词汇与表达 scholarly treatise 学术论文 bureaucracy 政府部门 rational 合乎情理的 courteous 有礼貌的 Internal Revenue Service (美国)国内收入署,缩写为 IRS welfare department 福利部门 bungle 弄糟,搞坏 discriminatory 带有歧视的 insensitive 冷漠的 rev up 加速