It interesting because the people at the CIA probably could be fairly described as "liberal, non-violent, and honorable". That sort of thing is heavily into banality of evil territory - lovely people, just a bit thoughtless about the effects they were having on huge tracts of the world.
With those types the best you can hope for is at least they act rationally and effectively. It gets really sad when they do tremendous damage for reasons that make little sense, even in context.
It’s the residual Puritanism. Foreign-facing federal agencies like the CIA were the last bastion of American WASPs. I grew up around these people because my dad worked for a contractor for USAID, which was at times a front for the State Department, and was similarly WASPy culturally. They’re lovely people. Soft-spoken, orderly and rule-following, public service-oriented, intellectually curious. But they also have this cultivated detachment from baser emotions that enable them to pursue abstract ideas to their logical conclusions without normal gut feelings and common sense getting in the way.
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It interesting because the people at the CIA probably could be fairly described as "liberal, non-violent, and honorable". That sort of thing is heavily into banality of evil territory - lovely people, just a bit thoughtless about the effects they were having on huge tracts of the world.
With those types the best you can hope for is at least they act rationally and effectively. It gets really sad when they do tremendous damage for reasons that make little sense, even in context.
It’s the residual Puritanism. Foreign-facing federal agencies like the CIA were the last bastion of American WASPs. I grew up around these people because my dad worked for a contractor for USAID, which was at times a front for the State Department, and was similarly WASPy culturally. They’re lovely people. Soft-spoken, orderly and rule-following, public service-oriented, intellectually curious. But they also have this cultivated detachment from baser emotions that enable them to pursue abstract ideas to their logical conclusions without normal gut feelings and common sense getting in the way.
Yes, WASP are attracted to universal moral principles. A major WASP institution (namely, a religious denomination) is literally named "Universalism".