There are three tragedies in the IG report. And they're three types of Feds.
1. There are the Strzoks. Guys who are so politically oriented that their duty and obligations mean nothing to them. They casually corrupt non-partisan institutions for what they consider to be a higher cause and in the process destroy the legitimacy and credibility of those institutions. (Think of Comey's A Higher Loyalty. It can just as easily refer to the corruption of institutions for partisan higher causes.)
2. There are the Comeys. Careerists who pick the safe side, while covering their fundaments, and then lecture everyone else on honor and duty. They don't believe in anything. They're out for themselves. They're absorbed the essential lessons of big government. They're cynical and apathetic beneath a false outer shell of false nobility to disguise their fundamental corruption.
3. Everyone else.
In a way it's the third category in the IG report, the agents who try to do their job, or don't even bother, because they know it's pointless. The system is corrupt. It serves hacks like Comey. It's political. Just ask McCabe and Strzok. If you want to get ahead, you keep your head down and make the right calls. And you run out the clock on some cases, you put in the time, but you know they're going nowhere.
And then whatever ideals you have die with you.
That's how men like Comey get made. Cynicism and apathy come from knowing how the system really works. It corrupts you and then you corrupt the next generation. That's the true rot of big government. And the imperial city where all this is taking place is filled with that rot from top to bottom.
Why shouldn't Strzok have believed that his political agenda was more important than the credibility of the FBI when he had no reason to believe in its credibility? Why shouldn't Comey have played his crooked games, and then tried to blame it all on McCabe? Why do anything if you don't believe that what you're doing is worthwhile? That's the true tragedy.