What do you stand for?

In the last week or so, we’ve seen shocking brutality from the Trump administration. A boat was blown up by the United States. Ostensibly crewed by Venezuelan drug dealers, the attack is said to have killed 11 people. Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that more such acts will be forthcoming.

There are early reports that Bari Weiss—a pundit and editor who sees herself as a truthteller but is in reality a toady to power—may be given CBS News to run. In bowing to the government, CBS has apparently already agreed not to edit interviews with administration officials, even if they lie or wildly misrepresent the facts on the ground.

Supreme Court Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch recently chastised lower-court judges, saying they “may sometimes disagree with this court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them.” In response, one judge pointed out that the Supreme Court is reversing so much precedent with so little explanation that it is difficult to discern what the law now is. And on Monday, the highest court in the land horrified many but shocked few when it greenlit race as a factor for immigration stops.

A few days before that, the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual predation went to Capitol Hill for a “Stand with Survivors” press conference to refute the president’s claims that the Epstein stories are a hoax. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson claimed Friday that the president had merely been an FBI informant in connection to the Epstein sex ring, a comment which he has since distanced himself. And now we have seen the actual birthday book that is filled with grim hints about Epstein’s perversions and obsessions.

Meanwhile, closer to home, on Saturday, I went to Malcolm X Park with thousands and thousands of other people, for the “We Are All DC” march. It was an attempt to reclaim the city from federal use of ICE and the National Guard, which the administration has been using to intimidate city residents and visitors.

What do all these things have in common? The point of today’s post is it’s important to know your own principles and broadcast them to other people, because the ruling party in America is as sure as hell out there spreading theirs.

Virtue signaling matters in profound ways. Do you stand for anything? If so, how would anyone tell? Today, I’m going to address the importance of standing up for your values in a time where the implicit and explicit shared principles that have built the best of what the U.S. is as a country are being destroyed day by day before our eyes.

For this post, I could bring in historical examples that parallel what’s happening in the U.S., like legislative elections in which centrist parties ended up setting up authoritarian control of a country by virtue of their unwillingness to stand up for the best principles of their republic. But honestly, this essay is less about historical situations, because as I’ve said before, we are singularly poised to act in ways that most citizens and residents of other countries that got mired in hardening authoritarianism were not. We have more options than those facing rising oppression in places like Hungary and Turkey, which have faced similar political degradation in the last decade.

Of course, some people welcome what Trump is doing, but in this aspect, I don’t think we’re different than any other society. Even in the absence of heavy, prolonged propaganda, a country is likely to have a baseline of one-quarter or so of its population willing to embrace hardline authoritarianism.

My sense is that what’s happening in the U.S. today follows that model, and that when it comes to his support beyond that vicious 25%, most people either do not support Trump or have only a weak affinity for him, due to having been deeply propagandized against the alternatives. We see the malleability of his support with the dive he’s taken in terms of public approval on issues that he ran on. People were propagandized to believe he stood for nebulous ideals that pushed their vague about who’s really American, even as he also ran on the specific policies he’s now carrying out.

Which means that along with the chunk of people who believe very much in the xenophobia, white supremacy, and extrajudicial violence of the Trump administration, there’s a group of Americans who somehow voted for him based on vibes, without really having understood what he stands for. We don’t have to let them off the hook for their vote to acknowledge that they are inattentive casualties of a bait-and-switch scheme. But Trump’s policies are proving to be unpopular, as are his ideas about who’s American.

This is a moment in which offering people a different path forward can have a lot of impact. And each one of us can help articulate what vision we think should shape government. It doesn’t even have to be a complex theory of politics.

The current pressures

My feeling is that the reason most people aren’t acting right now to save democracy is twofold. The first reason is that even where laws exist to protect speech, the administration has in a matter of months created an environment in which there are, at a minimum, low-grade penalties for criticizing the president or speaking out against his policies.

The second reason people are hesitant to act, in my opinion, is related. The political climate in the U.S. is bad enough that it’s uncomfortable to speak out. Yet at the same time, people still feel free enough personally that it seems silly to speak or act with any urgency about the fall of democracy. They know they could speak out, if they really had to. Therefore actually doing so would make them feel like alarmists, or worse, like poseurs.

Trump’s first administration came and went with a lot of the same hateful rhetoric, their thinking goes, and it was succeeded by a traditional Democratic president. In their mindset, the institutions held. Are we really that far from normal electoral politics? But on some level, they still fear that the country is spiraling.

In my opinion, our institutions have been degraded in a variety of ways over the last decades, and that degradation is accelerating. The increasing downward pressure on dissent that’s now creating self-censorship is extremely dangerous. It’s reshaping government agencies, television news, print, state governments, and universities—all the key institutions we rely on for information and to act on our behalf as intermediaries.

Not all of this pressure comes from the administration or its allies. Even before Trump was reelected, and especially afterward, universities clamped down on protests against the Israeli government’s atrocities in Gaza. Rather than trying to thread the needle on supporting the safety of Jewish students who were at times lumped in with the Israeli government by protesters, several schools began supporting or at least tacitly collaborating with authorities in punishing their students across the board.

Hype and conformity

But we see pressure, too, from the venture capitalist and corporate words, with crypto and generative AI sweeping people into worlds in which they are being taken advantage of with little oversight. There is now pressure to somehow undo vaccines, too—one of the two or three greatest inventions in human history in terms of the ability to protect people and save lives. This pressure extends to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services threatening to interfere with state polices in places like West Virginia, where the board of education recently defied an executive order from the governor, who was trying to override its lawful mandatory vaccination program.

Since the election, I’ve seen people saying that, well, maybe Democrats went too far in their rhetoric about a more equal society or in bending over backward to facilitate inclusion. But the things these people cite were deliberate efforts to bring more people into society. What is happening now is very much the opposite, using the law, executive power, threats against corporations, and bringing universities to heel to push for the exclusion of nearly every kind of minority community. It’s worth signaling what you believe in, because we’re now seeing how quickly civil society can disintegrate when nearly everyone in charge ducks their responsibilities to the people.

On the move in DC

As an example of standing up for your values, I want to talk about the march in last Saturday that began on the hill at Malcolm X Park in Northwest DC and wound its way down 16th Street toward the White House.

I got to the park about a half an hour before the march began. There were several huge banners—everything from what looked like a king-size pink bedsheet with a silkscreen of the Banksy flower-throwing guy, but one ready to launch a submarine sandwich instead. I saw an oversize Palestinian flag, as well as union banners saying “Trump Must Go Now,” “End the Occupation,” “DC Statehood Now,” and many other slogans.

The rain held off until after the march and speeches, but the noontime heat was blistering. The crowd sweated in unison, staying out for hours anyway. Off to one side of the lawn, a mini-marching band made up of a few drummers and brass instruments played swinging versions of “Bella Ciao,” and “Push It.”

Countless groups came together in solidarity for the march. Unions in particular showed up. I talked to Bobbie Jones Kimball, with hospitality food service workers Local 23, who explained why she had come from Williamsburg, Virginia. “It has got to stop,” she said. “It is not fair. It is inhumane. We’ve got to get Trump out of here. So we’re standing up for what’s right. And we’re here for the support—to support DC to get ICE up out of here.”

Leaving the park and coming down 16th, I ran into a friend near U Street. As we headed downtown, we passed Foundry United Methodist Church, which rang its bells for the marchers just as we passed in front of it. A banner hung on the front of the church and welcomed everyone, “no matter what you believe or doubt, your age or ability, your race, color or ethnicity, your immigration status, your gender identity or whom you love.”

The whole event was high energy. There were lots of retirees, who were more willing than anyone else to show their faces in photos I took. They expressed the understanding that people with jobs could more easily be targeted through their employers, especially in a town like DC, filled with federal employees, as well as nonprofits and contractors subject to government pressure.

Along with the people Stephen Miller has decried as 90-year-old “stupid white hippies,” a lot of young people came out, and Black folks, too. DC is a wonderfully diverse city. And unlike some of the other DC-area marches I’ve attended since Trump’s return, there were also groups of Latino marchers, who were understandably more reluctant to identify themselves on the record. Their presence was particularly brave, given the degree to which law enforcement has been harassing the undocumented, those with green cards, and citizens alike, when officers want to target immigrants. 

Daniel Hunter wrote a post for Waging Nonviolence, suggesting that the Saturday march could serve as an example for how other cities might prepare and respond to similar incursions and attempts at intimidation by the federal government. “In times of great crisis,” Hunter wrote, “great leaders use the moment to deepen values.”

The value of signaling

The day after Sean Dunn, the sandwich guy, got arrested, someone I know well called me. They were saying how stupid Dunn was for throwing away years of his life in jail for a stunt or a momentary satisfaction. The same person asked me what good demonstrating would do anyway, if it’s all just theater. What difference would it really make?

My answer then was that we didn’t know what would happen to Sandwich Guy. We didn’t yet know what kind of impact that visual would have. But it was funny and got a lot of attention. Obviously, no one was going to be injured by having a sandwich thrown at them. So even though it didn’t look like a complex bit of long-planned guerrilla theater, it might still end up being really effective. And in the end, it did turn into an iconic moment of the summer of 2025 in the nation’s capital.

I told this person that it was important for other people to know that DC residents hate what’s being done to the city—the intrusion of federal officers, the threats to home rule. Demonstrations won’t fix the problems, but they help let people know how many people are unhappy about it, and they can be a basis for education and further actions.

We’re seeing that DC grand juries are refusing to participate in the federal overreach. In at least seven cases in recent weeks, including that of the Sandwich Guy, juries have rejected indictment on charges that are clearly disingenuous or excessive. An eighth refusal was handed down today.

Virtue and vice

The fewer the people who stand for a principle, the easier it is to eat away at its edges. Until recently, people probably thought that certain bedrock principles of the U.S. were safe—that immigrants play an irreplaceable role in making this country function, that the U.S. government and many of its citizens have treated Black Americans abominably and should seek to address that harm, that women should have political and legal rights, that people should be able to vote without fear of intimidation.

But we’ve seen the current administration attack those ideas head-on. Immigrants are described as animals. In public, speaking into a microphone this week, the president seemed to suggest that domestic violence was not a crime at all. “Things that take place in the home, he said, “they call crime....If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this is a crime.”

The administration is both virtue signaling and vice signaling. Their virtue signaling is a false front on vice itself, promising to create and protect an all-white America that will lead to some mythical restoration. This is literally what they are working to do. Using Nazi methods, we see Homeland Security posting ads reproducing Nazi propaganda, sometimes using the same language and more often using similar images.

I’ve talked before about the theory of the mushy middle that sits between hardcore authoritarian supporters and those who prioritize flexibility and inclusion in society. Propaganda energizes its extremist base and both persuades and intimidates the mushy middle to think that the authoritarian has a lot of support, that he is inevitable, that he guarantees security, and that he has popular support.

People fall for it—with enough propaganda, a lot of people. And some of them are willing to go along with the harm someone like Trump will do, even if they know that these actions are wrong.

Unfortunately, the Democrats as a whole are currently not trying to recapture that mushy middle and pull it toward a defense of rights or freedom or government’s role in protecting things like health care. Instead of persuading that mushy middle and rallying it, the opposition in Congress and the Senate seem to be trying to represent it, which puts them in a position of not standing for anything. 

The big picture

The mushy middle, by definition, doesn’t have firm opinions. They’re changeable and can be moved. What this means we have to virtue signal, to show up in community meetings and on the streets, to create a wall of virtue signaling that puts social and political pressure on everyone from local mayors to ICE agents and National Guard members around the country, as well as national leaders.

Last week, I criticized Ben Smith of Semafor for refusing to acknowledge that democracy is in jeopardy or to see it as a concept to which he owes any fidelity as a journalist. One thing I can say in his defense is that when he was at BuzzFeed a decade ago, Smith backed up his reporters when they were attacked. Smith seems to me to be like a lot of people—he’s part of that mushy middle, willing to shift his priorities according to the current political situation.

And what virtue signaling does, especially when it’s followed by action, is to set that tone of expectation, or normalcy. I went to a high school where there were plenty of racists, but no one in my hometown ever did a Nazi salute in the schools I attended. People made private comments all the time, but shouting out racist slurs at ballgames would have been shocking. During the first Trump administration, we saw these things begin to creep into public view, until Elon Musk eventually threw that salute on stage. Now Musk regularly posts eugenic and racist tropes on his social media platform, where it’s seen by millions.

There are countless other examples of how Trump’s rhetoric moved the bar and expanded what kind of hateful or discriminatory behavior happened in everyday life in our communities. And it turned out that universities and corporations were just as susceptible to influence. Vice signaling works and empowers other people to follow suit.

Virtue signaling is a key way to combat this. Standing up for what you believe in as often as you can opens the door for others to imagine what they could do, too. It strengthens the courts that are trying to uphold the law while risking censure from judges like Kavanaugh and Gorsuch. It reassures vulnerable communities that people around them might have their backs.

What the federal government has been doing in DC is unique. Because of the District’s retrograde political status, in which it lacks voting representation in Congress, the U.S government has an outsized say in what happens in the District. So DC showing up is literally representing in a way that its residents aren’t allowed to at the polls.

And DC marching can set the stage for other places to refuse in more directions, since they often have more control over everyday life there. Just like we’ve already seen in Los Angeles and in Chicago, residents can show up in ways that help protect those being targeted and tell agents of the police state that they’re unwanted. Social consequences for carrying out Trump’s mission are a good thing.

Going forward

These next few months will be critical, as the administration tries to consolidate its power against opposing voices. Ideally, those who are least vulnerable will take the greatest risks. And whether you plan a complicated operation or community effort, or maybe you just join in someone else’s project at the last minute, you never know what kind of impact you’re going to have.

But there’s value in everyone showing up in some way to demonstrate what they stand for, whether it’s quietly in smaller communities or before the whole world. What principles are bedrock to the society you want to live in? Ask yourself, figure it out, and let others know how you feel, from your family and neighbors to your representatives to your state or the entire country.

It can be horrifying to see all the ways that our societal institutions are caving to federal demands, often preemptively. You might be tempted to wonder, “Did those companies and universities believe in any of those ideals all along?”

The answer is “no.” Those organizations are institutions. They don’t have beliefs. Their administrators adopted programs to protect and address human rights and civil rights because decades of pressure and action made it the socially acceptable thing to do. Their leaders did these things because virtue signaling on the part of the public made them think they had to, or because they themselves had been brought up in traditions that normalized it for them.

A pendulum can go a long way out before it swings back. But we can also interrupt its path and affect its arc. We can insist on human decency and rights. We can prioritize a country that takes care of its people. But in order to create that country, before we can act to build it, we first have to imagine that world and speak up on its behalf.

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