On Moral Witness and Coalition Politics

Why Both Are Necessary and Neither Is Sufficient

I had a conversation with a friend this week that crystallized something I’ve been wrestling with: the tension between moral clarity and coalition building, between refusing accommodation and winning elections, between naming collaborators and creating exit ramps from collaboration.

We were arguing about tactics. He thinks I’m being unproductive by writing off conservatives who sit on their hands while Trump dismantles constitutional governance. I think he’s being dangerously accommodating by suggesting we should soften our witness to make space for people uncomfortable with trans activists at protests.

Neither of us is wrong. And that’s precisely the problem—and the possibility.

The Disagreement

My position is straightforward: The line has been crossed. Federal agents conducting warrantless mass detentions. The Speaker refusing to seat a lawfully elected member of Congress. Administration officials calling judicial review “insurrection.” These aren’t norm violations—they’re the end of constitutional governance.

The choice is binary. You defend the constitutional order or you collaborate in its dismantling. There’s no neutral position because sitting on your hands is choosing collaboration. And the people who need convincing aren’t confused—they’re showing us who they are.

They know what Trump is doing violates their stated principles. They privately admit it. But they’ve decided that maintaining their social status, their financial comfort, their tribal belonging matters more than their oath to the Constitution. That’s not confusion. That’s cowardice.

So I’m not interested in carefully persuading Megyn Kelly that maybe calling for dictatorship to “crush liberal culture” is problematic. I’m not investing energy in creating comfortable entry points for conservatives who think the real problem with anti-authoritarian protests is that trans people are there.

Six years of Benghazi hearings. Six years of email investigations. If Republicans believed the ethical standards they claimed to enforce, they’d apply them to themselves. They don’t. That’s not confusion—that’s revealed preference. They want power for their side, constraints for their enemies. And I’m supposed to empathize with their journey while they rationalize collaboration?

No.

My friend thinks this is tactically unwise. That moral outrage without coalition-building is just witnessing collapse with good reasons. That you actually have to win elections, which requires building the biggest possible anti-authoritarian coalition, which means not leading with the most divisive cultural issues.

He’s not wrong about needing to win. But he’s wrong that my approach contradicts that goal.

What Moral Witness Actually Does

Here’s what my friend misunderstands about the work of moral witness: it’s not trying to persuade everyone. It’s not even primarily about building coalition in the immediate sense.

Moral witness does several things that tactical coalition-building cannot do:

First, it maintains the standard. When everyone is accommodating, when the discourse is all about “both sides” and “it’s complicated,” someone has to say clearly: No. This is wrong. Federal agents conducting warrantless mass detentions is wrong. Using ICE as cultural enforcement is wrong. Calling judicial review “insurrection” is wrong.

Not as partisan talking point but as constitutional principle. Not as tribal signaling but as defense of the framework that protects everyone’s liberty, including those we disagree with.

Without that clarity, the Overton window shifts. What was intolerable becomes debatable. What was debatable becomes acceptable. What was acceptable becomes normal. Moral witness holds the line that makes coalition meaningful—because without that line, what exactly are we building coalition to defend?

Second, it documents the choice. When this is over—however it ends—the record will exist. Who collaborated. Who resisted. Who sat on their hands claiming it was complicated. Who recognized the threat early and who accommodated until it was too late.

This isn’t about revenge or vindication. It’s about maintaining the possibility of moral accountability. About ensuring that “I didn’t know” or “I thought both sides were bad” can’t be claimed by people who had access to clear analysis and chose to ignore it.

Third, it gives clarity to those who already see it. The people I’m actually writing for aren’t conservatives who need persuading. They’re the people who see what’s happening, who feel the outrage, who wonder if they’re crazy for being so alarmed while others seem calm.

I’m telling them: You’re not crazy. This is really happening. Your moral intuition is correct. The people claiming this is complicated are either confused or complicit. Hold your ground.

Fourth, it creates the framework for future understanding. There will be a moment—maybe soon, maybe years from now—when the crisis becomes undeniable even to those currently accommodating it. When the economic pain spreads. When the repression touches people who thought they were safe. When the constitutional collapse becomes impossible to ignore.

In that moment, people will need a framework that makes sense of what they’re seeing. They’ll need language that names what happened and why. They’ll need to understand that this wasn’t inevitable, wasn’t both sides, wasn’t just political disagreement—that specific people made specific choices that led here.

That framework needs to exist before that moment arrives. Moral witness builds it.

What Coalition-Building Actually Does

But my friend isn’t wrong that you need coalition. Moral witness alone doesn’t win. It maintains standards, documents choices, provides clarity—but it doesn’t build the power necessary to actually stop authoritarian takeover.

For that, you need organizers creating infrastructure. Lawyers filing challenges. Politicians making different choices. Media holding power accountable. And yes, bridge-builders talking to persuadable conservatives, creating exit ramps from collaboration, making it possible for people to change their minds without losing everything.

This work requires different skills and different positioning than moral witness. It requires meeting people where they are, understanding their concerns, creating space for evolution rather than demanding instant moral clarity. It requires tactical flexibility that pure moral witness cannot provide.

The person doing this work cannot write essays calling conservatives cowards and traitors. That forecloses the possibility of bridge-building. It makes every conversation adversarial rather than persuasive. It treats everyone not already on the right side as irredeemable.

Which is why it’s someone else’s job, not mine.

The Productive Tension

Here’s what I’ve realized through this conversation with my friend: these approaches are in tension, but the tension is productive if held consciously rather than collapsed into either pure moral clarity or pure tactical calculation.

Democratic defense requires multiple roles:

Moral witnesses who name what’s happening without equivocation, who refuse accommodation, who draw bright lines and force people to choose. Who maintain the standard even when—especially when—maintaining it is unpopular or tactically inconvenient.

Bridge-builders who talk to persuadable conservatives, who make it easier for people to exit MAGA, who create off-ramps from collaboration without demanding they admit moral failure as the price of entry.

Organizers who build the infrastructure of resistance—the protests, the legal challenges, the mutual aid networks, the democratic defense institutions that turn clarity into action.

Synthesizers who articulate the framework that makes sense of what’s happening and what’s required, who connect individual violations to systemic patterns, who provide the intellectual architecture that makes resistance coherent rather than merely reactive.

These roles are different. They require different positioning, different skills, different relationships to the people being addressed. And they’re often in tension with each other.

When I call Republicans who sit on their hands “cowards engaged in moral treason,” I’m not helping bridge-builders create exit ramps. When bridge-builders emphasize how “complicated” people’s choices are, they’re not helping me maintain moral clarity about what those choices mean.

The mistake is thinking everyone has to play the same role. The second mistake is thinking your role is the only one that matters.

On the “Unicause” Problem

My friend raised what he called the “Unicause” problem—the way progressive politics bundles every issue together so that defending democracy gets packaged with open borders, gender ideology, Gaza solidarity, and every other progressive cultural position.

This, he argues, makes it harder for conservatives uncomfortable with progressive culture to join anti-authoritarian coalition. When showing up at a protest means seeming to endorse everything any other protester believes, you’ve created a barrier to entry that keeps potential allies away.

I understand the concern. But I think it’s fundamentally misdiagnosed.

The problem isn’t that trans activists show up at anti-authoritarian protests. The problem is that media—especially right-wing media, but also mainstream outlets looking for “both sides” conflict—frames any protest as representing every position held by anyone present.

Bad Bunny performing at the Super Bowl becomes “Latino invasion.” A protest against constitutional violations becomes “open borders rally.” Trans people existing at a demonstration becomes “the left wants gender transitions for kids.” An NFL game becomes a venue requiring ICE deployment because the performer is Puerto Rican—despite Puerto Ricans being American citizens.

This is a propaganda problem, not a coalition problem. And you can’t solve propaganda problems by excluding the targets of propaganda from your coalition. That just validates the propaganda’s premise—that some Americans’ participation in civic life is inherently problematic.

The answer isn’t “chase away the trans activists so conservatives feel comfortable joining.” The answer is: “Trans activists have First Amendment rights too, and if your opposition to authoritarianism is contingent on not having to be in the same protest as people whose existence makes you uncomfortable, you’re not actually opposed to authoritarianism—you’re just uncomfortable with this particular authoritarian.”

Because here’s what my friend’s concern actually reveals: he’s worried about conservatives who claim they’d oppose Trump except they’re too bothered by progressive cultural positions to act. But what does that actually tell us about those conservatives?

It tells us they’ve already made their choice. They’re not sitting on the sidelines because they’re confused about Trump’s authoritarianism. They’re sitting on the sidelines because they’ve decided that cultural comfort matters more than constitutional governance.

That’s the revealed preference my friend wants me to accommodate. And I won’t. Not because I’m being tactically foolish, but because accommodating that preference is itself a form of collaboration.

On Timing and Accommodation

My friend thinks I’m being impractical. That moral purity without coalition is powerless. That you need to meet people where they are, give them time to come around, create comfortable entry points rather than demanding immediate moral clarity.

But here’s what he’s missing: time is running out.

The accommodationist strategy assumes we can slowly build consensus, carefully persuade people, wait for them to recognize what’s happening at their own pace. But every day of accommodation makes the next violation easier. The sufferable becomes insufferable only after it’s too late to reverse.

This is Jefferson’s warning in the Declaration: “all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

Humans endure tyranny. They accommodate. They find reasons why this particular violation isn’t quite bad enough to justify the terrifying work of resistance. They suffer while evils are sufferable.

Federal agents conducting warrantless mass detentions of American citizens? Sufferable. Children zip-tied and sorted by race? Sufferable. American cities described as military training grounds? Sufferable. ICE deployed to cultural events as ethnic intimidation? Sufferable.

Each accommodation lowers the threshold for what’s acceptable. Each time we decide that this particular evil is sufferable—that we should be patient, that we should understand why people are hesitant, that we should create comfortable entry points rather than demanding they choose—we give permission for something worse.

And then one day, the sufferable becomes insufferable. Too late. After we’ve accommodated our way into something we can no longer escape.

This is not an argument for giving up on coalition. It’s an argument that coalition-building cannot be achieved through accommodation of those who treat constitutional governance as negotiable based on their cultural comfort level.

You build coalition by making the choice clear, not by obscuring it. By showing people what’s at stake, not by pretending the stakes are lower than they are. By demonstrating that the constitutional crisis is real and immediate, not by suggesting we have time to wait for everyone to get comfortable.

The Nazi Germany Comparison

My friend thinks invoking Nazi Germany is tactically counterproductive. That once you make that comparison, anyone not already convinced dismisses you as hysterical.

Maybe. But the comparison is apt, and refusing to make it for tactical reasons is its own form of accommodation.

Moderate German conservatives tolerated Hitler because they feared communism more. They rationalized that using state power to suppress the left was the lesser evil. They thought they could control him, that he’d be constrained by institutions, that the real threat was Bolshevik revolution.

Otto Wels was one such conservative. He accommodated, rationalized, waited. And when he finally recognized what Hitler actually was—when he finally chose to resist—Hitler’s response was: “Late you come, but still you come.”

Too late. The institutions were already captured. The constitutional order was already destroyed. The choice he should have made earlier could no longer prevent what had been set in motion.

This is the pattern we’re watching repeat. Conservatives rationalizing that using federal power to suppress progressive culture is justified by the threat progressivism poses. That Trump’s violations are acceptable because the alternative is cultural revolution. That authoritarianism targeting the right enemies is preferable to democracy that might produce the wrong cultural outcomes.

Megyn Kelly stating explicitly that crushing liberal culture through state power is more important than fidelity to law and constitution. Republicans in Congress sitting silent while the Speaker refuses to seat a lawfully elected member. Conservative intellectuals treating protesters as terrorists for opposing constitutional violations.

This is how it happens. Not through dramatic overnight transformation but through accumulated accommodations, each justified by fear of the alternative, each lowering the threshold for what’s acceptable.

Refusing to name this pattern because the comparison is “tactically counterproductive” is prioritizing tactical comfort over truth. And prioritizing tactical comfort over truth is how democracies die—not through honest recognition of danger, but through cultivated uncertainty about whether the danger is real.

What Each Role Requires

So here’s the synthesis: Both moral witness and coalition-building are necessary. Neither alone is sufficient. And they require different people playing different roles.

If you’re doing moral witness:

You refuse accommodation. You name what’s happening without qualification. You call collaborators what they are. You maintain the standard even when—especially when—it’s unpopular. You document the choice so history can hold people accountable. You give clarity to those who already see what’s happening.

You do not soften your analysis for tactical reasons. You do not pretend the crisis is less severe than it is. You do not create false equivalences to make fence-sitters comfortable. You do not accommodate the premise that cultural discomfort justifies constitutional abandonment.

If you’re doing coalition-building:

You create exit ramps from collaboration. You talk to persuadable conservatives. You understand their concerns and create space for them to change course without losing everything. You make it possible for people to join resistance even if they’re not ready for full moral reckoning about their previous choices.

You do not demand immediate moral clarity as the price of entry. You do not treat everyone not already on the right side as irredeemable. You do not write essays calling them cowards—because that forecloses the possibility of persuasion.

What both require:

Trusting that the other role is necessary even when it seems to contradict your own work. Not demanding that moral witnesses soften their clarity. Not demanding that bridge-builders harden their approach. Holding the tension consciously rather than collapsing it into either pure moral judgment or pure tactical flexibility.

And recognizing that time is short. That coalition-building cannot mean accommodation of those who treat constitutional governance as negotiable. That exit ramps must exist but cannot be built through pretending the stakes are lower than they are.

My Choice

I’ve made my choice about which role I’m suited for. I’m not a bridge-builder. I don’t have the temperament for it, the positioning for it, or frankly the patience for it.

When I see Megyn Kelly calling for dictatorship to crush liberal culture, I don’t think “how can I help her walk back from that position?” I think “this is sedition and should be named as such.” When I see Republicans sitting silent while constitutional order collapses, I don’t think “they’re on a journey and need time.” I think “they know what they’re doing and are choosing cowardice.”

That’s moral witness. It’s what I’m built for. It’s what my writing does.

I gave up friends for this. I gave up professional opportunities. I gave up the comfort of maintaining relationships with people making choices I find morally intolerable. I don’t relate to conservatives who claim it’s too complicated to oppose Trump because they’re worried about progressive culture. I think they’re rationalizing moral failure.

And I’m not going to soften that judgment because it makes bridge-building harder. That’s not my job. My job is maintaining clarity about what’s happening and what it means. Someone else can build bridges to people I’ve written off.

But—and this is crucial—I have to trust that someone else is doing that work. I have to recognize that writing people off personally doesn’t mean the movement should exclude them permanently. That my role is not the only role. That harsh moral judgment serves a purpose even if it forecloses certain kinds of persuasion.

On Revealed Preference

My friend keeps trying to redirect me from moral judgment to practical strategy. He thinks my outrage, however justified, isn’t a plan for winning.

But here’s what he misses: moral judgment is itself strategic. Not in the tactical sense of “this will persuade fence-sitters,” but in the deeper sense of maintaining what Václav Havel called “living in truth.”

When conservatives claim they’d oppose Trump except they’re too uncomfortable with progressive culture to act, that’s revealed preference. Their choice reveals what they actually value. And accommodating that preference—pretending it’s a legitimate calculation rather than moral failure—validates their framework.

It says: You’re right that cultural comfort is a legitimate consideration when deciding whether to defend constitutional governance. You’re right that the presence of trans activists at protests is a meaningful barrier to opposing authoritarianism. You’re right that your discomfort matters as much as other people’s liberty.

This accommodation doesn’t build coalition. It teaches people that their comfort is more important than constitutional principle. That opposing authoritarianism is optional based on whether they like the other people doing it. That citizenship is contingent on cultural agreement rather than shared commitment to democratic framework.

That’s not coalition-building. That’s surrender.

Real coalition requires making clear what the choice actually is: You can defend constitutional governance or you can collaborate in its dismantling. Your cultural comfort is not a third option. Your concerns about progressive excess are not relevant to whether federal agents should conduct warrantless mass detentions. Your discomfort with trans activists is not a legitimate reason to sit out the defense of democratic institutions.

Choose. And if you choose to sit on your hands because you don’t like who else is standing up, you’ve made your choice. You’re a collaborator, not a fence-sitter.

That’s harsh. But it’s true. And pretending it’s not true for tactical reasons is how democracies die—not through honest recognition of what’s at stake, but through accumulated compromises that make the stakes seem negotiable.

For Those Who Already See It

If you’re reading this and recognizing yourself in my anger—if you’re feeling the same outrage at conservatives who sit on their hands, the same exhaustion at being told you should empathize with their journey, the same frustration at “both sides” discourse that treats constitutional collapse as just another political disagreement—let me say this clearly:

You’re not crazy. You’re not overreacting. You’re not being unproductive by refusing to accommodate those who treat citizenship as contingent on cultural comfort.

The constitutional order is collapsing. Federal agents are conducting warrantless mass detentions. The Speaker is refusing to seat lawfully elected members of Congress. Administration officials are calling judicial review “insurrection.” ICE is being deployed as cultural enforcement at sporting events.

This is happening. And people who claim it’s complicated to oppose this because they don’t like trans activists or progressive culture are showing you who they are.

They’re not confused. They’re choosing. They know what Trump is doing violates constitutional principle. They privately admit it. But they’ve decided that maintaining their tribal belonging, their social comfort, their cultural preferences matters more than their oath to defend the Constitution.

That’s not a journey. That’s cowardice. And you don’t owe them empathy for it.

Your job—our job—is maintaining clarity about what’s happening. Refusing accommodation. Rendering witness. Documenting the choice so history can hold people accountable. Giving voice to the outrage that others suppress for tactical reasons.

This is necessary work. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s unproductive or unserious. The people calling you unserious are trying to make you complicit in their accommodation.

Hold your ground. Keep naming what’s happening. Refuse the premise that opposing authoritarianism should be contingent on who else is opposing it. Maintain the standard that makes coalition meaningful—because without that standard, we’re not building coalition to defend constitutional governance, we’re building coalition to manage its collapse.

For Those Doing Different Work

And if you’re someone building bridges to conservatives, creating exit ramps from collaboration, talking to persuadable people in ways I’m not capable of or positioned for—keep doing it. That work matters too.

But don’t ask me to soften my witness for your tactics. Don’t demand I treat cowardice as confusion or collaboration as complexity. Don’t insist I accommodate premises that make your work easier at the cost of truth.

We’re playing different roles. Both are necessary. The tension between them is productive if held consciously. But holding it consciously means accepting that I’m going to write people off that you’re trying to reach, and you’re going to create space for people I’ve judged harshly.

That’s fine. That’s how it should work. You do your work. I’ll do mine. Trust that both serve the larger project even when they seem in tension.

Just don’t ask me to believe that moral clarity needs to be sacrificed for tactical flexibility. Or that rendering witness is less important than building coalition. Or that my refusal to accommodate is what’s preventing conservatives from making the right choice.

They’re adults. They have agency. They’re making choices. And if harsh moral judgment from me is enough to keep them from defending constitutional governance, they were never going to defend it anyway.

The Center Holds Through Both

The center—that institutional and epistemic space where constitutional order remains possible—holds only if both things happen:

Someone maintains the standard without accommodation, refusing to normalize what should remain intolerable, documenting choices so accountability remains possible.

And someone builds the coalition necessary to defend what the standard protects, creating pathways for people to join resistance even when they’re not ready for full moral reckoning.

These are in tension. But the center holds through the tension, not through its resolution.

If everyone does moral witness, we maintain clarity but lack power. If everyone does bridge-building, we build coalition that doesn’t know what it’s defending.

We need both. Simultaneously. Held in productive tension by different people playing different roles and trusting that the other’s work serves the same ultimate goal: preserving the possibility of democratic self-governance against those who would replace it with authoritarian administration.

Two plus two equals four. Federal agents conducting warrantless mass detentions violates the Fourth Amendment. The Speaker refusing to seat a lawfully elected member violates Article I. These truths don’t become less true because stating them makes coalition-building harder.

And coalition-building doesn’t become less necessary because some people maintain truth without tactical accommodation.

Both are necessary. Neither alone is sufficient. The wire still holds—but only if we hold both ends consciously, trusting others to maintain tension we can’t hold alone.

This is how resistance works when the stakes are civilizational. Not through everyone doing the same work, but through different roles serving the same defense. Not through collapsing tension into either pure moral clarity or pure tactical flexibility, but through holding tension as the productive force that makes both possible.

May love carry us home. Not as sentiment but as practice. Not as naivety but as the disciplined maintenance of what makes resistance sustainable. Not as accommodation but as trust that others who see what we see will hold their part of the center, even when—especially when—our methods differ.

The circus continues. The center needs holding. And we hold it together—through roles that differ, through approaches in tension, through the difficult trust that both are necessary and neither alone is sufficient.

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