The People in Charge Think You’re as Bad as Them. Will You Let Them Be Right?
Forget ‘virtue signaling.’ We need to talk about the Trump administration’s vice signaling.
There is no more perfect embodiment of vice signaling, and its embarrassingly hollow cowardice, than Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth – an alleged serial drunkard and sexual abuser working for Donald Trump, a man found liable for sexual abuse and former friend of the world’s most infamous pedophile – posting memes about attacking boats in the middle of the ocean, and then pinning it all on a subordinate when the going gets tough.
Much hay has been made about “virtue signaling” over the past decade (often, ironically, by some of the most unvirtuous people in public life). A disorienting panic, given how much of US politics in recent years has brought unseen levels of vice. And what was sometimes hidden before is not just out in the open, but winked and nodded at daily.
In one sense, it’s refreshing for the villainry festering in the swamp to be expressed more honestly. On the other hand, they think there’s an appetite for this.
Are they right?