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as it turns out, faceless bureaucracies do seem inclined to throw up charismatic heroes of a sort, in the form of an endless assortment of mythic detectives, spies, and police officers

I’m not sure this at all follows. Real “faceless bureaucracies” are not turning out *real* charismatic heroes here; the “mythic” police officers, detectives, and spies he mentions have very different functions in society than the *actual* police officers, detectives, and spies, who exist at the violent intersection between state and citizen. For one thing, actual officers of the state actually enforce the actual law, while mythic charismatic heroes do not — their function (like their existence) is, in a word, mythical. If anything, mythical charismatic police officers like “Dirty Harry” fulfill precisely the role that real bureaucrats *do not*; they address the failure of actual bureaucracies to do what bureaucratic legitimacy is allegedly based on: the production of security. Unlike the *actual* agents of the law, who are “never around when you need them”, Phillip Marlowe is “always on he case”; unlike *actual* police officers, who shoot a man 41 times for reaching for his wallet, Elliot Ness goes after real bad guys; unlike actual private detectives, who poke intrusive surveillance technologies at our most intimate lives, Sherlock Holmes could solve a case in his drawing room; unlike the actual spies listening to our phone calls and reading our email, James Bond only bothers to go to work when the fate of the world is at stake.

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