Interesting. Zooming out a bit I think you are making an argument similar to the argument entailed by the quote "war is politics with guns, and politics is war without guns".

The quote captures the violence inherent in politics. What is interesting about your argument is that you seem to carve out an exception for working within the system.

If we take "the system" to mean the dominant political order, or put another way, the manners and conventions preferred by those in power, then your comment seems to be a strong argument for preserving the status quo of powerful interests. This is nearly the definition of conservatism.

But you also mention that some try to attack our institutions. You include Wikileaks in that list, so I think there is an interesting distinction to be made.

Most of what Wikileaks does is to reveal corrupt or illegal behavior done by officials and government institutions. If the behavior that is revealed makes the public angry, then the leaked information puts the institutions involved in danger. The institutions generally exist because they provide a service to the public and the public funds the institutions in exchange for the service that is performed.

When leaked information shows that the service is not being performed in an honest way, the public may recoil and begin to question whether the institution should be trusted to continue functioning, since the leaked information reveals that there has been dishonest stewardship going on.

To use an analogy, take the situation with Jerry Sandusky. He ran the institution of Penn State football. Once someone leaked the information that he was abusing children with the help of some of his top staff members, the institution of Penn State football came under great scrutiny. In your words, it was "attacked" by those who were outraged that the legitimacy and history of the football program had been used to facilitate the inappropriate behavior of one man.

I view the leaked information and subsequent partial destruction of the Penn State football program as a very good thing. I'm actually very pleased that top aides to Sandusky were fired, and that Sandusky himself was no longer allowed to have a job where he could take advantage.

In the short term, this looks bad for the institution of Penn State football, but over time it offers the program a chance to rid itself of corruption and rebuild itself into a stronger institution that does not foster child abuse.

It sounds like you are arguing that there is a sacred area that it is impolite to question and impolite to "attack" if one comes to view it as being counter-productive. It seems that you believe that the people who leaked information that the US Government was lying to the public about the Iraq and Afghan wars should not have leaked the information but should instead have handled the situation internally within the military. Similarly one might expect that you would prefer that the person who leaked Sandusky's behavior should have instead gone to him and advised him to stop abusing children but should not have reported the abuse to authorities or the parents of the children he victimized.

While you may not hold these views, I think they may be logical consequences of the views you do express.

In my opinion, the only way we can have strong institutions is if we have high levels of accountability and zero wiggle room for fraud and corruption.

To draw on your point about information campaigns, I'm less concerned with the kinds of campaigns you mention and more concerned with the campaigns run by the most powerful interests. People in the US fear Muslims and brown folks largely because of a multi-billion dollar propaganda campaign intended to make Americans want wars in the middle east. There are unintended consequences to that campaign such as the fear and mistrust spilling over onto brown skinned immigrants from Latin America, etc.

There is very little scrutiny of key US institutions. The GSEs withheld financials for several years leading up to the crisis in 2008. Many officials have been found to have committed perjury, etc., yet have not been held accountable. There are so many disturbing ways in which the core institutions of our democratic system are being corrupted and used by those in power for their own benefit at the expense of society as a whole.

The solution is not trust in our leaders, good manners, or loyalty. The solution is to increase accountability and transparency. Someone like Jones should have no fodder for conspiracy theories because we should all see obviously corrupt leaders disgraced and removed fairly often.

How is it that we tolerate Paul Ryan, a man who has spent his life in public service and yet has a net worth exceeding $8 Million Dollars? Why don't we scrutinize how he got that money and what was exchanged for it?

When we allow this stuff to happen and we act loyal toward the people doing it, we empower people like Jones to embellish and stylize nearly any kind of conspiracy theory he dreams up. In a democracy, public servants do not become multi-millionaires. It just doesn't happen.