>>If the dignity of the institutions was upheld by a conspiracy of silence about their dirty laundry, then the institutions were built by count Potemkin.
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>Do you think that the Marshall plan was any less brilliant because of the way our predecessors treated the people who were here before the Europeans arrived?

Brilliance and success are not the issue here. It's the perceived dignity which wasn't really there. It's a shame that the current culture (and many previous ones) allows for biography laundering by donations, charitable foundations etc - one may have helped thousands of poor people, but why should we forget that that help was bought by running dozens of thousands into poverty and few dozens of them six feet below?

>Do you think that Mother Theresa should have been chastised because some deviate priest in Queens, NY grabbed an altar boy's butt?

No, but rather for running an advertising campaign in/over her own name and playing the title role in building a personality cult. I'll never understand why she had to declare herself as Albanian, when the Bojadži family is Cincar (Tsintsar, a branch of Vlah/Wallachi... basically heirs of the mix between roman legionaries and the local folks, same word as Welsh). Sorry to burst your bubble, but she's known here.

>Should family members who have siblings in prison wear signs advertising that factoid?

Yes. As much as we here deserved the sanctions and bombing over what Milošević and his gang did, or as you do for the incessant warfare of your country. So where do we get with this guilt-by-association, aka collective responsibility?

The institutions would be better served, IMO, by disowning the thugs in their ranks. Those guys deserve to be shunned by the institutions and handed over to the justice system, not to be protected by those institutions (sorry, wrong order - justice first). What we generally see is that the institutions actually prevent justice from being done to their higher ranking members - and it doesn't matter whether the institution belongs to this or that system or country. Which is exactly why I welcome this so-called erosion of trust. Trust needs to be earned, not imposed.