I actually agree with you about him being intelligent and sincere. I am actually fascinated by people like him. The fact that he believes those idiotic things

I actually agree with you about him being intelligent and sincere. I am actually fascinated by people like him. The fact that he believes those idiotic things while having a seemingly very reasonable belief system around the goals and functions of the institutions he serves, and what his role is in them, is something I find quite darkly comical. Actually I think his sincerity makes his one-off performances laugh-out-loud funny. Watching the Errol Morris documentary with him is tragic and comic at the same time. I mean, take for instance his view on the Vietnam war. He goes from a very touching and thoughtful personal recollection of the evacuation to Saigon to telling us that his reflection over the entire decades-long US involvement in a conflict that murdered 4 million people as being "some things work out, some things don't." And this appears to be after quite a lot of prompting. It is profound, and inane in equal measure. Hannah Arendt would be slack-jawed.