Virtue Signaling

Psychologically speaking, people naturally want to be seen as being ‘good,’ and expressing public support for noble causes accomplishes that.  And while satisfying the basic human need for approval it also signals membership in the ‘good guy’ tribe.  And just as some people flaunt wealth, status or intelligence, the democrats love to flaunt their morality, and virtue signaling has become their method of choice.

Meanwhile, politicians know when they publicly align with certain values it attracts voters even when their signaling is hollow.  And in many cases, when a politician virtue-signals, what he or she is really trying to do is shame or discredit their political rivals, and if you don’t agree with their position, then you must not care about the poor, the rainforests, or whatever their latest cause is and the entire matter becomes a tool of moral one-upmanship.  Meanwhile, in some environments where certain views are expected (i.e., academia, media, and the U.S Congress) virtue signaling is a survival strategy.

Which brings me to the Democrat Party at large in the age of Trump.  As I’ve written. the democrats are leaderless and without a vision for the future; and they certainly can’t grab onto Trump’s common-sense agenda.  And unless they want to “get primaried” they also cannot openly advocate for eradicating anti semitism on college campuses, deporting illegal aliens, defunding sanctuary cities, providing proof of citizenship to vote, cutting funding to schools that refuse to eliminate DEI programs or god-forbid, working with DOGE to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in government.

So, what the democrats are left with is empty posturing — making moral claims without backing them up with meaningful action – which it’s flat out dishonest.  When I watch Chris Van ‘I wanna be president’ Hollen hamming it up in front of a camera it’s patently obvious it’s all about self-image and saying, “Look at me, I’m fighting for the “rights” of the downtrodden,” which deflects the attention from actual victims or problems.

For the four long Biden years Tucker Carlson opined regularly about the democrats desire for power.   So, when virtue signaling becomes a means to attack others or silence debate (“I care, so I’m better than you”) the matter is no longer about principles but rather it’s about power, shutting down conversation and eliminating any nuances inherent in the matter.

Virtue signaling can be forgiven when expressing legitimate moral values, but it’s hypocritical when it substitutes for taking real action or when done for recognition or weaponizing it to shame others and shut down dissent.  The reality is that virtue signaling without virtue is beyond hypocritical, which is why we hear so much talk about “due process” these days.

Political commentator Judd Garrett, who I quote or abstract from frequently because he’s knowledgeable, articulate and always fact-based, addressed the matter of due process quite well when he opined,  “Nobody who is claiming that these illegals deserve due process actually cares about due process.  That is the entire point. There are not enough judges, not enough courts, not enough hours in the day, not enough days in a year to give every illegal alien due process. We would have to provide 7,350 formal court hearings to these illegals every single day, including weekends and holidays, from today until the last day of Donald Trump’s presidency to process just the illegal aliens who came here during the Biden administration.”

What Van Hollen and the democrats are hoping for, and perhaps even banking on, is since as a nation we don’t have the resources to give all of the illegals due process, the government will eventually be forced to grant them amnesty, which is arguably why the Democrat Party invited 12 million illegals to overwhelm our system while avoiding due process rather than engaging in it.

Did the democrats care about due process when Barack Obama killed American citizens, Anwar Al-Awlaki and Samir Khan with a drone strike?  Neither were on the field of battle, nor did they threaten anyone, making Obama’s actions a violation of 5th and 14th Amendments.  Did Van Hollen care about due process for the January 6th  rioters who were arrested and thrown into the squalid DC jails to sit there for over a year without a hearing?  Where was the “due process” then?

As Garrett opined, “the democrats only care about a principal when it serves their agenda, and when the same principle works against their agenda, they ignore it or willfully violate it. “Due process” is like every other buzz word or phrase the democrats have in their verbal armamentarium, i.e., racist, fascist, Nazi, Hitler, misogynist, homophobe, democracy, ad nauseum.”

But then, without a leader, this is the only thing the democrats have to offer – virtue signaling on 80/20 issues, most of which are little more than common sense – don’t expect it to stop anytime soon.

Quote of the day: “For many on the political left, especially among activist Democrats, moral posturing has replaced legitimate activism.  Saying the ‘right’ things become more important than doing the right things.” – James Lindsay.