The Rise of the Anointed: Moral Arrogance in the Age of Activism
In today’s culture, there’s a group of activists who behave as if their political beliefs grant them a special kind of moral authority. They don’t just see themselves as protestors or participants in civil discourse—they act as if they are society’s ethical overseers, uniquely entitled to disrupt, intervene, and impose their will on others. I call this phenomenon the Anointed Prerogative : the belief that one’s ideological purity bestows an exclusive right to bypass the rules everyone else is expected to follow. We’ve all seen the scenario play out. An activist steps into a situation—say, an ICE operation or a corporate meeting—and demands that their cause be recognized as urgent and morally unimpeachable. Everyone else is expected to stand down, defer, and acknowledge the Anointed as the rightful moral authority in the room. It’s the social equivalent of a doctor walking into an emergency and saying, “I’m a doctor,” prompting the crowd to step aside. Only in this case, the acti...
