>The people working at Fort Meade are not evil. They truly believe they're doing a great service to the nation.
I don't want to Godwin the discussion here, but it's not at all rare for people to act in an evil (or whatever you want to call it -- bad, harmful) way while not recognizing their own actions as evil.
That people don't think their actions are evil doesn't prove that their actions aren't evil.
Add to that, evil acts are almost always done in service of an ideal. For example the USA has economically and socially gutted many nations by force in service of the democratic/free-market ideal. Yet it's rare to find an American who sees it this way. US-USSR proxy wars in the Middle East and Latin America from the 60s-90s weren't destructive, we were just trying to help those countries out. We wanted to modernize them, to improve their lives, not to destroy them. They were just too uncivilized, too barbaric to get it. Why would they hate us for that?
Hence 'ideology'. Easy to serve, hard to view objectively when you've spent a lifetime on the inside.
>We have had the luxury of coming of age in a time where there is no credible threat to our very national and physical existence.
The Berlin wall didn't fall until 1989. The Soviet Union didn't dissolve until 1991. The period of 1991-2001 was spent fighting proxy wars in former USSR terrories or allies [1]. Iraq. The Yugoslav Wars in Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo. Haiti. All of this was an extension of the cold war. The Red threat didn't officially end until 09/11/01, Communism continued to be a spectre held over the head of the American public. It's just the discourse shifted from "the USSR has bombs that can kill us right now" to "Communism is bad therefore we're preventing it from spreading". The constancy of threat and surety of the potential for complete annihilation was always there.
And of course, from 2001 on everyone spent all day, every day thinking of the most horrible ways they could be attacked by terrorists. With great encouragement by media and government apparatuses.
>But let's not demonize the individuals. After all, they're only doing what the people demanded after we were attacked.
Again avoiding Godwinning, but to a certain extent you must demonize the individuals. Else there is no incentive for people to be vigilant of runaway ideology, like the US is operating under currently. Else there is no incentive for individuals to formulate a moral compass external to the state, because why bother when "they told me to do it" is a legitimate excuse? The state idology becomes your morality. After all, you're just tryin' to put food on your family.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_mili...