I know and have known many good field-grade officers. The Navy has had officers like Marcenko (Commander/05) who were good, and NOT political. It seems that to make 06 and above is where the shift occurs. Look at how many 06s and above it took to rail-road LtCol Lakin into prison for his constitutional stand.
Let’s say that I am National Guard, ordered into a town to make arrests or put down “insurrection”. I don’t want to shoot civilians, and I feel very uncomfortable in my role, but I go. I don’t intend to shoot anyone. Then someone fires on me or shoots the man next to me who is my friend. Where do I go now? Where is my loyalty? Adrenaline. survival instinct, tribal affiliation, lot’s of forces at work here. Now my hind brain and instincts overdrive my cerebral cortex and intellect. This is how we can get played against each other.
Listen to an FBI sniper justify and defend his colleague for shooting an unarmed woman holding an infant.
Or let's say you're RA, and ordered to arrest mobilized Guard units and officers mustering at the (totally legal, totally constitutional) command of the governor of their State.
That's the Merriman scenario all over again, and it's also the Missouri Militia Volunteers, who were overreached in their own camp and ordered to surrender by a RA officer leading a whomped up force of regulars and Missouri Wide Awakes (think ACORN, think Sturmabteilungen, think New Black Panther Party). The Wide Awakes were secretly armed by the governor of Illinois illicitly, at the order of Abraham Lincoln, two months before he was sworn into office.
Think about that a while.