The Scold Problem

Why fear-based moral enforcement is killing the left’s ability to build democratic coalitions

Photo by ᕈ O W L Y on Unsplash

I had just boarded my plane when this piece from Julia Métraux at Mother Jones caught my eye on the socials. I think Jon Stewart has been making a lot of moral sense lately, so to see an overt ethical charge lodged against him caught my attention. I do write about morality a lot, after all. These things interest me. So I clicked in, read it, and immediately started writing this piece.

Métraux’s underlying point is valid. People with medically fragile family members face real harassment for masking. One father described getting cremation quotes for his daughter after others’ refusal to mask led to pneumonia and life support. That’s not abstract—that’s material harm. Stewart made jokes about masking, and Métraux argues he’s punching down at vulnerable populations.

Here’s my problem: she’s right about the harm and wrong about the tactics. The piece reads as scold, not persuasion. “First of all, asking people why they are masking is invasive behavior.” Not “can be” invasive. Categorically invasive.

This matters because moral life requires context. Was Stewart’s question cruel or curious? Mocking or awkward? The absolute language eliminates the distinction—it replaces judgment with rule-following. Protocol says asking is invasive, therefore Stewart violated protocol, therefore correction is required. But protocol compliance isn’t virtue. It’s the elimination of the moral reasoning that virtue requires.

And I’m certain—I’d bet handsomely—that if Stewart were presented with these examples, he’d respond with genuine empathy. He’d probably apologize. He’d bring someone affected on the show. He’d model the correct response.

Which is exactly the problem. Because Stewart’s inevitable apology won’t demonstrate that Métraux made compelling moral argument. It will demonstrate that the scold works. That fear of being called out is sufficient to extract submission. That you don’t need to persuade when you can threaten public correction.

I understand the counterargument: persuasion is slow, vulnerable people need protection now. But fear-based enforcement doesn’t protect them—it creates the backlash that endangers them. The average voter experiences constant protocol enforcement as dispossession. They watch Stewart get corrected for a joke and learn: step out of line, face the scold. The boundaries keep tightening. Compliance never leads to safety, just to the next demand. And millions choose authoritarians over continued supervision. The right’s recruitment pitch is brutally simple: “The left thinks you’re a bad person. We don’t.” Every extracted apology proves them right.

This isn’t a critique of left-wing values—protecting vulnerable people, taking harm seriously, building inclusive communities. It’s a critique of the professional-managerial class substituting institutional moral signaling for democratic persuasion. The oligarchic threat is real. But when you make potential allies choose between living under constant protocol anxiety or voting for authoritarians, you’ve made coalition-building impossible.

You can’t defeat oligarchic capture by treating potential allies as subjects requiring correction. Métraux is right that vulnerable people face harassment. She’s wrong that fear-based enforcement will protect them. Her tactics help elect the people who will make vulnerable lives immeasurably worse.

Real civic virtue requires persuasion, not compliance. It requires treating people as capable of moral reasoning, assuming good faith, maintaining proportionality. Stewart will apologize. The virtuocrats will claim vindication. The reactionaries will use it for recruitment. And the space for genuine democratic deliberation—the space we desperately need to resist actual oligarchic capture—will shrink further.

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