The Etiquette of Collapse

Living in a Moral Universe Where Calling Evil ‘Evil’ Is the Only Sin

Photo by Paul Volkmer on Unsplash

This is, after all, a philosophy blog. But sometimes the most important philosophical work involves documenting how moral collapse presents itself when it wears the costume of sophisticated concern.

I’ve been doing a bit of writing about my unvarnished views of the moral bankruptcy of the oligarchs who have seized our public sphere—those who treat nuclear war as entertainment content while hawking luxury goods, Supreme Court justices who create doctrines of presumptive presidential constitutionality, federal police conducting explosive raids on family homes while children sleep inside. I’ve used words like “evil” to describe people who systematically dismantle democratic institutions for personal profit. I’ve reminded the powerful that their power, like all power, is temporary.

The response has been illuminating—not because of disagreement with my analysis, but because of the exquisite moral priorities revealed by those who rushed to scold me for my tone.

The Gentleman’s Objection

A reader, Aaron Hanna, emerged as the perfect specimen of captured liberal discourse, gently correcting my “simplistic” framing and suggesting I had abandoned “persuasion” for “blanket denunciation.” Aaron wanted me to treat the All-In Podcast hosts as “very normal human beings trying to make sense of a very messy world” rather than what they actually are: moral actors who’ve made deliberate choices about how to monetize chaos while providing intellectual cover for authoritarianism.

Let me be clear about what Aaron was asking me to do: treat obvious moral bankruptcy as mere “rational calculation.” Pretend that discussing nuclear weapons with the same energy as tequila marketing represents legitimate strategic thinking. Act as if systematic enablement of authoritarianism is just another valid perspective in the marketplace of ideas. This assumes that these men are operating in good faith and simply need better arguments to see the error of their ways, rather than recognizing them as moral actors who’ve made deliberate choices about how to use their platforms and influence.

Aaron wanted me to engage with their “analysis” as if it represented good-faith reasoning rather than recognizing it for what it is: sophisticated rationalization for destructive policies that serve their personal and financial interests. When he suggested that “rational calculations that the author considers immoral/evil are exactly the kind of calculations that leaders have to make all the time,” he revealed the category error that makes serious moral discourse impossible. These men aren’t leaders making difficult decisions under constraint. They’re media performers monetizing human suffering while their audience mistakes nihilism for wisdom.

But here’s what Aaron and people like him fundamentally misunderstand: when you call obvious moral vampires “very normal human beings,” you’re not demonstrating intellectual charity—you’re providing cover for systematic corruption while performing the role of reasonable discourse. You’re enabling the very forces you claim to be analyzing objectively.

Most importantly, Aaron fundamentally misunderstands what persuasion means in this context. Persuasion doesn’t require treating bad-faith actors as if they’re operating in good faith. It doesn’t require pretending that systematic moral corruption is just another perspective worthy of respectful engagement. Real persuasion means helping people see clearly what they’re actually looking at. When people mistake moral vampires for serious thinkers, when they confuse sophisticated nihilism for strategic wisdom, when they treat obvious grift as legitimate analysis—the persuasive task isn’t to engage more politely with the grift. It’s to help people recognize grift for what it is.

The Pearl-Clutching Society

But Aaron’s genteel correction paled next to the horror expressed by others at my use of the word “evil.” Grown adults literally recoiled from moral language as if I’d committed some unspeakable breach of intellectual etiquette. They live in a moral universe where using the word “evil” to describe systematic corruption is considered ruder than the corruption itself.

This represents the complete domestication of liberal discourse by oligarchic interests. These people have been so thoroughly trained to avoid moral categories that they experience moral clarity as personal attack. They’ve learned that their careers, their social standing, their access to elite circles all depend on maintaining the fiction that we’re dealing with normal political disagreements rather than systematic institutional capture.

They demand “nuance” while supporting policies that terrorize families. They worry about “divisive rhetoric” while remaining silent about the actual division of families through deportation. They fear “extremism” in language while normalizing extremism in policy. They want “respectful discourse” about the disrespectful deployment of federal police against American citizens. The concern trolling reveals a moral universe so inverted that accuracy becomes incivility, that calling sedition “sedition” is considered a greater transgression than committing sedition, that pointing out corruption is treated as worse than perpetrating it.

The most revealing aspect of the pearl-clutching over my characterization of oligarchs as “evil” is not the tone policing itself, but what it exposes about the moral universe these people inhabit. They live in a world where calling sedition by its proper name is considered ruder than actual sedition. Where questioning someone’s character is a greater social transgression than undermining constitutional democracy. Where the real crime isn’t advocating for authoritarianism to protect your portfolio—it’s having the poor taste to mention it at dinner parties.

The Democracy Defender’s Delicate Sensibilities

But perhaps no response revealed the pathology more perfectly than that of Uriel Epshtein, CEO of the Renew Democracy Initiative, who emerged to scold me for philosophical observations about mortality. According to Uriel, “Nobody Lives Forever” is indeed a dangerous message. A notion, that shatters the uncomfortable illusion, of chasing an infinite tomorrow that never comes, while spiritually and literally bankrupting the here and now.

One might wonder why the CEO of an organization dedicated to renewing democracy is more concerned about reminders of the universal human condition than about the systematic deployment of state violence against American families. He wants me to be “disciplined and careful” lest we “further divide” while federal police blow off doors with explosives to terrorize sleeping children, “mistakenly” arrest American citizens with no due process, and the oligarchs funding the entire political project focus on their plunderous tax cuts.

This is what institutional capture looks like when it wears the costume of democratic advocacy. A man running an organization called Renew Democracy Initiative spending his time tone-policing critics of authoritarianism while actual authoritarianism deploys explosive force against American families. It would be comical if it weren’t so morally grotesque.

Let me be absolutely clear about what I was doing, since some have privately suggested there was some violent undertone to my words: there is no violent undertone to what I’m saying. There is no threat I am making. I am making a philosophical point about what it means to be human. I am making an appeal to the “why?” I am challenging the notion that wealth and power are ends in themselves. I go further, as a liberal, and insist they must not be ends. And if someone insists on making them ends, then we have a serious problem on our hands—a threat to justice, a threat to our system of self-government in our beloved America.

So if you are afraid of my prose, then perhaps you should be. Because I would guess your fear is defending something that is perhaps indefensible. So I say it again, with more force than the first time: nobody lives forever.

The exquisite moral delicacy is breathtaking: tone down your language about mortality while they literally threaten people’s lives through state violence. Mind your rhetoric about death while they enact policies designed to kill the poor through healthcare cuts and environmental destruction. But yes, by all means, let’s worry about whether oligarchs might misinterpret a philosophical observation about the universal human condition. Wouldn’t want to make the people destroying democracy uncomfortable with reminders that their reign, like all reigns, is temporary.

The Professional Moderates

What unites Aaron, the pearl-clutchers, and Uriel is their shared identity as professional moderates. Which is to say, for these people, their entire career depends on performatively treating all positions as equally valid, all perspectives as equally legitimate, all moral judgments as equally suspect. They’ve made their living by serving as intellectual valets to power, making oligarchy seem reasonable, authoritarianism seem normal, corruption seem sophisticated.

This is a form of what I can only call procedural fetishism. A systematic confusion of form with substance, civility with morality, tone with truth. They’ve been so thoroughly domesticated by proximity to power that they’ve lost the capacity to distinguish between democratic and anti-democratic forces, between normal political competition and systematic institutional capture. When I refuse to participate in their polite fictions, I’m not just challenging their arguments—I’m threatening their entire professional identity. Their job is to ensure that obvious corruption gets treated as complex policy analysis, that systematic moral bankruptcy gets discussed as mere strategic disagreement, that authoritarian consolidation gets framed as unfortunate but understandable political development.

I’m told I should be more “persuasive,” as if treason were a policy disagreement requiring careful rhetorical strategy rather than a crime demanding moral clarity. But I’m not trying to convince oligarchs to stop being oligarchs any more than I’d try to persuade bank robbers to consider alternative career paths. The purpose of moral language is not to convert the corrupt but to ensure that everyone else can still recognize corruption when they see it.

In a society where calling evil “evil” is considered the height of incivility, we have already surrendered more ground than we can afford to lose. In this moment of moral collapse, I am unapologetically making a stand for moral clarity. If that makes comfortable elites uncomfortable, if it disturbs self-styled democracy advocates with their demands for civility representing the cautious disposition of their wealthy donors, then to them I say: they can take a number, get in line, and kiss my ass.

The Complete Moral Inversion

We have witnessed the complete inversion of moral categories. In their universe, calling evil “evil” is extremism while enabling evil with plausible deniability is sophistication. Using moral language about immoral actions is divisive while the immoral actions themselves are just politics. Reminding oligarchs of mortality is dangerous while oligarchs deploying federal police against families is policy. Abandoning moral categories is intellectual humility while maintaining them is intellectual arrogance. Treating systemic corruption as normal is nuanced thinking while recognizing it as corruption is simplistic analysis.

They’ve created a discourse environment where the most transgressive thing you can do is call things by their proper names. Where accuracy becomes incivility. Where moral clarity becomes extremism. Where the real crime isn’t undermining constitutional democracy—it’s having the poor taste to mention it at dinner parties.

This isn’t friendship. It’s complicity dressed up as civility. It’s a gentleman’s agreement to look the other way while democracy burns, provided everyone maintains proper etiquette about the arson. It’s procedural fetishism elevated to the level of moral philosophy, where being polite about fascism becomes more important than opposing fascism.

The concern trolling is particularly rich: tone down your language about mortality while they literally threaten people’s lives through state violence. Mind your rhetoric about death while they enact policies designed to kill the poor through healthcare cuts and environmental destruction. Worry about whether oligarchs might misinterpret philosophical observations about the human condition while remaining silent about their grotesque detachment from that condition.

The Gentleman’s Agreement

What we’re witnessing is merely a gentleman’s agreement to treat fascism as friendly disagreement. You can discuss the “complex challenges of democratic governance” and the “difficult trade-offs between security and liberty,” but you cannot call systematic institutional capture by its proper name without violating the social contract of sophisticated conversation.

This isn’t confusion or intellectual disagreement. This is the deliberate cultivation of moral blindness as a professional requirement. These people understand perfectly well what’s happening—they’ve simply decided that their comfort matters more than democratic survival, that their access to elite circles matters more than calling corruption “corruption,” that their reputation for sophisticated moderation matters more than the reality of systematic institutional capture.

They’ve made themselves complicit through the simple expedient of making complicity feel sophisticated. They’ve learned to mistake their moral cowardice for intellectual nuance, their professional self-interest for principled moderation, their systematic blindness to obvious evil for mature political wisdom. They want the aesthetic of serious discourse without the substance of moral judgment.

And here’s the thing that makes their performance particularly contemptible: they know exactly what they’re doing. They’re not confused about the stakes. They’re not uncertain about the moral dimensions. They’ve simply calculated that their personal comfort and professional advancement matter more than calling things by their proper names.

The Stakes

When federal police are conducting explosive raids on American families while the CEO of the Renew Democracy Initiative worries about my tone, we have moved beyond irony into something approaching moral farce. When grown adults recoil from the word “evil” while remaining silent about systematic corruption, we are dealing with a form of moral collapse that makes serious discourse about serious threats nearly impossible.

These people aren’t defending democracy—they’re providing intellectual cover for its systematic dismantling while performing the role of concerned moderates. They’re not promoting civility—they’re enabling barbarism with better table manners. They’re not fostering productive discourse—they’re ensuring that the most important conversations become literally impossible to have in polite society.

What they represent is the complete bankruptcy of institutional liberalism—the transformation of democratic guardianship into oligarchic service, the conversion of moral reasoning into procedural etiquette, the replacement of principled resistance with sophisticated accommodation. The exquisite moral delicacy of those who worry that reminding oligarchs of their mortality might be “misinterpreted” while remaining silent about actual federal police conducting explosive raids on family homes with children inside reveals everything wrong with liberal discourse today.

The Choice

We face a choice that these professional moderates are desperate to avoid acknowledging: between comfort and clarity, between etiquette and survival, between the polite fictions that make elite discourse comfortable and the moral truths that make democratic resistance possible.

I choose moral clarity over sophisticated blindness. I choose accuracy over false charity. I choose calling evil “evil” over the elaborate intellectual gymnastics required to avoid noticing evil while it operates in plain sight. Some things actually are good versus evil. Some choices actually do reveal character. Some actions actually deserve condemnation rather than sophisticated analysis.

When a society loses the capacity to make these basic moral distinctions—when calling corruption “corruption” becomes worse than committing corruption—it has abandoned the meaning-making project that makes civilization possible. And when the people supposedly charged with defending democratic institutions spend their time policing the tone of criticism rather than the substance of what’s being criticized, they’ve revealed themselves to be exactly what they are: the etiquette committee of the apocalypse.

The professional moderates want us to believe that we’re dealing with complex policy disagreements requiring nuanced analysis. But we’re not. We’re dealing with systematic institutional capture by people who treat human suffering as entertainment content while selling luxury goods to an audience they secretly despise. When you mistake moral vampires for serious thinkers, when you confuse sophisticated nihilism for strategic wisdom, when you treat obvious grift as legitimate analysis—you’re not demonstrating intellectual sophistication. You’re demonstrating the kind of moral blindness that makes fascism possible while everyone involved maintains their reputation for civilized discourse.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And when federal police are blowing off doors of family homes with explosives while democracy’s supposed defenders worry about whether I’m being sufficiently respectful to oligarchs, we are living through the kind of moral collapse that historians will struggle to believe actually happened.

The center cannot hold when those charged with holding it have convinced themselves that noticing its collapse is ruder than causing it. But at least now we know exactly who they are and what they represent: professional moderates whose moderation serves power rather than principle, whose civility enables barbarism, whose sophisticated blindness makes accountability impossible.

Remember what’s real. Call things by their proper names. And refuse to participate in the gentleman’s agreement that treats fascism as friendly disagreement while everyone involved feels sophisticated about their complicity.

The revolution is recognizing that the emperor has no clothes. The rebellion is saying so out loud, regardless of how many courtiers rush to scold you for your tone. The resistance is choosing moral clarity over comfortable lies, even when—especially when—that clarity makes the people destroying democracy uncomfortable with reminders of their mortality.

And again, with more force than the first time: nobody lives forever.