Status Anxiety in the National Security State

I wrote a thing on Twitter about my hangups when I was initially entering the policy world (which was my career before becoming a scholar). A subscriber prodded me to share it here, and maybe elaborate further, so, here you go?

It started with a piece in The Atlantic, which read:

...most aggression is local: kids tend to target kids close to them on the social ladder. And the higher one rises on that ladder, the more frequent the acts of aggression—until, near the very top, aggression ceases almost completely.

That observation triggered a flood of memories about status insecurities when I was trying to get a career foothold in the national security industry.