It hasn’t always been this way. They haven’t always been able to say the quiet part out loud. In the past, if that had happened, they would’ve been punished for it and an example made of them, there would be public outcry and eventually some semblance of consequences. Nothing else substantial may have changed, they might have continued the exact same behaviors afterwards, but they stayed quiet and they were at least kept in check by the systems above them. This prevented others from seeing open corruption being tolerated and created a chilling effect on open corruption to put limits on it. It’s not ideal: Keeping it quiet obviously doesn’t eliminate it, but it does help control it.

Being able to say the quiet part out loud now is an escalation, and it will lead to even more severe escalations as more and more of the corruption and rot moves into the open. This is not a good sign and is not simply a sign of an organization or administration being too conservative and having too much power, this is not just being behind the times of social progress, this is something far beyond that, and it will continue to escalate.