I have become somewhat sensitive to the fact that different people saying the same words can have vastly different intentions.

I propose that government employees with opportunities to exercise some measure of legal authority over others actually switch off portions of their brain when they go on duty. Reason and logic, empathy, trust--all these seem suppressed with particular vigor. Anyone incapable of doing so either burns out and leaves voluntarily, or is shuffled out of the career track and systematically denied promotion, or any other opportunity to affect change from within.