Against Strategy: The Moral Stands We Need Today

In the past month, my partner and I spent time working from Lyon, France, a city that celebrates itself as the beating heart of the French Resistance during World War II. While Europe grapples with its own rising far-right movements, something profound shifted in how we experienced the city's many resistance memorials. Plaques and statues we would once take as distant historical markers now resonated with an unsettling immediacy. Each memorial—whether a simple plaque or starkly preserved site of execution—served as an urgent message to the present rather than a mere historical monument. Most often dedicated to ordinary citizens who drew moral lines they refused to cross, they include "Le Veilleur de Pierre" (The Stone Watchman) in Lyon’s Place Bellecour, an imposing statue marking where five men were publicly executed and left lying in the summer sun as a warning after a resistance attack on a Gestapo-frequented café. Inscribed on its base is a sentence that translates as, "Passerby, go tell the world that they died for liberty," while the memorial's very name serves as a haunting reminder that history watches or results from what each of us chooses.

While in France, like many Americans abroad, we were asked repeatedly, "Why aren't people in the streets? Why do they seem okay with what's happening?" I'd attempt to explain the complexities of the American political landscape—the lack of a popular mandate in Trump’s first term, the dawning realization that this is a protracted struggle—but these explanations felt increasingly hollow, finally dissolving into incoherence when asked about the seeming invisibility of the opposition party—left only with talk of supposed "strategies" and court fights. So, returning home in the aftermath of Senate Democrats capitulating on the government funding bill—one of the few moments when they had actual leverage to challenge Trump and Musk's gutting of federal agencies and all manner of constitutional provisions—the disconnect between the expectations of the broader democratic world and the strategic paralysis of some of the most powerful Democrats couldn't be starker. As Adam Gurri argued a few days ago, “Enough is enough.”

I realize the risk of drawing analogies between today's America and the period of French occupation—it could appear as moral blackmail to side with me over Senate parliamentary maneuvers few will remember, hyperbolizing in a moment of great fear anyway, and it would certainly cross some line of civility to note there are no monuments in Lyon to the political strategists of the French Third Republic. However, as someone who has taught ethics and this historical period for years, I believe the comparison reveals something essential about our current predicament: the difference between those in the U.S. speaking with moral clarity and those caught in the labyrinths of tactics and strategies playing out in their own minds.

Today—perhaps every day—is one to stand against all manner of endless strategizing. Don’t get me wrong—like each of us on Bluesky and other social media, I, too, am given to moments of fancying myself a master political strategist. A doom scroll through social media feeds reveals the absurdity: countless amateur tacticians offering unsolicited advice to Democrats and political reporters, dissecting New York Times headlines, rendering tactics for intra-Democratic elections three states over, and confidently prescribing precise paths forward. We posture as if we possess polling data and insider knowledge from some previous occasion when the world's richest man commandeered vast swathes of the public sphere while the chief executive systematically dismantled constitutional foundations. 

The paralysis of strategic reason

Congressional leaders seem caught in their own vice of “strategery” (to steal that early 2000s Bush malapropism), where figures like Chuck Schumer send out tone-deaf social media posts about the cost of eggs while the foundations of our democracy crumble. The recent capitulation on the government funding bill, followed by the “bet the company” strategy of the Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison law firm to capitulate in the face of administration demands, demonstrates how this obsession with strategic calculation has eroded the capacity for moral clarity. The alternative to their strategic accommodation is somehow always worse. “We can't fight this battle now; we need to pick the right moment,” they insist as each such moment passes. 

Politically, the strategic accommodation of the last few weeks has a long history. In the 1980s, many liberals, in a well-intentioned but ultimately disastrous move, gave up the language of morality to the right, with notable exceptions. There were understandable reasons: embracing pluralism and diverse conceptions of the good, distancing themselves from Jimmy Carter's perceived sanctimony, and avoiding association with the Moral Majority's dangerous fervor. (Historians will note, rightly, that liberalism has always looked to remove fights over the “good” from the public square, but that’s a different discussion.) At the same time, the political economy of the news was changing, with the rise of cable news meaning a whole cadre of endlessly replaceable strategists was needed to fill up equally replaceable airtime before social media gave us each the role, seemingly, of strategizing out loud within our online worlds. 

While no one would mistake pre-1990s Sunday political shows as Socratic dialogues, policy was out—that required expertise and came with the danger that some things weren't just a matter of opinion. These shows instead highlighted wedge issues that would leave the viewer thinking that much else was agreed upon. We're seeing the dangers of this approach today when, in fact, there are profound differences between an authoritarian regime and its democratic opponents. From the era of Bill Clinton onward, we’ve been raised to parrot a political mindset that sees strategy, simply winning at tactics, as an end in itself—it centers much of the political coverage of this long period. Not coincidentally, the mushrooming of Democratic consultancies all over Washington, D.C., has left many politicians afraid to say or do anything of consequence since that makes political enemies—and consultants hate divisiveness most of all. 

Politicians and party “strategists” faced with hot-button issues could either address them directly and risk alienating voters, appear evasive by dodging questions, or seem disconnected by pivoting to safer topics. The result was a strategic paralysis—a reactiveness to events, not the shaping of them—where moral discourse became nearly impossible, even rude. Straightforward ethical questions became reduced to cynical calculations about political advantage, with media outlets eager to exploit the conflict for ratings. The human beings at the heart of these issues—whether immigration, healthcare, or trans rights—disappeared beneath layers of strategic posturing. Full-on dehumanization, as we’ve seen with those of trans identities and now those labeled “DEI,” is not that many steps away. This retreat from moral language into strategy at all costs has rotted what we might call our communal soul—not as some ethereal substance, but as the habits and ingrained patterns of thought and action that shape our shared character. 

One would think, then, that Democrats would be wiping the floor with an opponent who acts with all the strategic subtlety of a wrecking ball. Yet their leaders’ strategery and strategic accommodation have paradoxically rendered Democrats inert while locked out of control of the government’s three branches—like chess players so fixated on calculating 20 moves ahead that they forget to make any move at all. 

That’s because Democratic leaders often turn at times like this to lawyers and strategies whose “role,” as Brian Beutler puts it, “is to advance their clients’ narrow interests. To limit their exposure to risk, help them improve their images, or keep them out of trouble. Meanwhile, these consultants’ strategies of acquiescing on the rights of immigrants and those with trans identities redound to no one’s benefit, having been a continuous moral horror and strategic blunder. Why believe people who would do such a thing have any principles at all—or would protect you when called upon? Meanwhile, the MAGA movement under Trump and Musk simply acts, demolishing American institutions with gleeful abandon, unconcerned with the sophisticated calculus that paralyzes their opposition.

The strategic society

But it’s not just certain Democrats and leagues of political consultancies with this problem. The "strategy" fetish has permeated every corner of our culture, taking a word with origins in Greek for the work of generals on fields of battle as a ubiquitous label for even the most mundane activities. We have "content strategies" for social media posting, "marketing strategies" for selling socks, "dating strategies" for finding a partner, "wellness strategies" for achieving optimal health, "personal branding strategies" for curating our online identities, "sleep strategies" for optimizing rest, "career advancement strategies" for climbing corporate ladders, "networking strategies" for professional connections, "time management strategies" for productivity, "learning strategies" for education, and on and on. No doubt, some of you are engaging in “reading strategies” right now.

The promise, implicit or explicit, is that with the right "strategy," any goal can be achieved and the solution to any great problem is but a life hack or shortcut away without a wider understanding or expertise about dating, health, etc. This proliferation of "strategy" often masks a lack of substance or expertise, or worse, actively obscures that not everything is a speculative set of moves on a battlefield. Yet, in strategizing about sleep et al., we’re told we’re "investing" in ourselves as we "gamify" our lives and "leverage" our assets—all euphemisms for treating life as a series of calculated risks, a constant speculation on the future in which one is either winning or losing. The rational economic actor of neoliberal fantasy has been replaced by homo aleator, “man the gambler” “betting the company” that is ourselves in a casino that never closes.

Strategic gambles

This gamification of existence leaves us constantly speculating on future advantages rather than engaging with present realities, treating both politics and personal life as exercises in risk management rather than navigating and shaping our common moral lives. This obsession with "strategy"—this relentless drive to optimize and game every system–is thus symptomatic of a deeper societal structure. Like many, I fear the con has evolved from something parasitical on our social fabric into a defining feature of our political and economic landscape where Trump is a symptom, not the cause. Strategic thinking as its own end introduces a fundamental duplicity into our relationships—with others and, perhaps more insidiously, with ourselves. When we're constantly strategizing, we're always pitching things a certain way—calculating the angles, gaming out scenarios, positioning for future advantage. We become unreliable narrators of our own experiences, often unable, as difficult as this is anyway, to differentiate between what we believe and what serves our strategic interests to believe.

This duplicity also corrodes human connection. The strategist in us becomes a confidence trickster, selling a version of ourselves we're not sure is genuine anymore. Thus, the strategic society is directly related to the widespread worries over “impostor syndrome.” Cynicism is becoming less a lens through which we view the system and more the system itself. 

This could lead you to turn the critique above on me: You wonder, what strategy is behind this essay? Just what is the author up to? Similarly, the call for "authenticity," so prevalent in contemporary activism and exemplified by figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, could be viewed as the ultimate winning strategy, even as she is among the few national politicians to front continually the moral stakes of the political issues that we confront—it’s that, as much as her politics, which is shared by labor activists that have long been the heart of the party, that often makes her the target of centrist opprobrium. Marketing studies tell us that consumers and voters respond positively to perceived authenticity; that the most effective communicators cultivate human connection, build trust, and foster rapport; and that the best campaigns succeed because their appeals don't register as strategic in the first place. So, perhaps I'm executing the meta-strategy of critiquing strategy itself. But even if that's true, it only reinforces my point: when anti-strategic thinking becomes subsumed into strategy, we've reached the event horizon of a cultural black hole from which the light of moral reasoning can no longer escape. 

To cut through this, we should front and defend the straightforward moral views we hold before wondering how and when to pitch ourselves. Sure, it’ll be said that this only registers within the political game as another move within this nihilistic system. A politician offering the simple statement, “This is wrong,” is likely to be covered on cable news by a panel of “expert strategists” wondering how this will play among the diner dwellers of rural Pennsylvania. How did they say it? Did they have the right gravitas? Will this shift the polls with the voters back home? 

Authoritarianism and the strategy of accommodation

The uncomfortable truth is that the "strategic" choice within authoritarian regimes—whether examining Arendt's portrait of Eichmann, the lead-up to the Rwandan genocide, South African apartheid, or the atrocities of centuries of colonialism—almost always pointed toward complicity. Survival, advancement, and security within horrific regimes call for strategic accommodation, not resistance. The bureaucrats who processed deportation orders, the neighbors who reported suspicious activities, and the bystanders who simply looked away—all could justify their actions through strategic reasoning. "What good would resistance do?" they might ask. "Wouldn't someone else just take my place? Wouldn't speaking out only endanger my family?" These are not irrational questions; they're the logical result of strategic thinking divorced from moral imperatives. 

When faced with moral crises, the path of least resistance—acquiescence, silence, neutrality—invariably presents itself as the most rational. We know this from everyday life as much as from the most profound historical moments. Stay silent, keep your head down, wait for a better moment to act, preserve your position for some hypothetical future when resistance might be more "effective"—live to fight another day. This logic is seductive precisely because it aligns with self-preservation. Yet, history shows this is precisely how systems of oppression perpetuate themselves—not primarily through true believers but through the quiet complicity of those who consider themselves to be doing what’s merely strategic, merely practical. The bureaucrats who process the paperwork, the politicians who offer measured critiques while voting for the status quo—all can comfort themselves with the alibi that inaction is somehow tactical, not a moral abdication. 

The act is the message

What, then, is to be done? What strategy do I offer? The only way out is through. We must short-circuit within ourselves the temptation to strategize our way around and often against our moral imperatives. This brings us to Hagan Scotten, the assistant United States attorney from the Southern District of New York, whose February resignation letter stands as a testament to moral clarity in our strategically murky times. Refusing to drop charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams as part of a corrupt bargain, Scotten wrote words that should echo beyond the confines of that moment: "It was never going to be me."

It's telling that today, it's often modestly paid civil servants taking principled stands while the most powerful among us—tech billionaires, congressional leaders, institutional gatekeepers—strategically retreat. One wonders what all those billions and power were for—generals endlessly preparing for a war they’ll never fight. The justifications we hear (or imagine) from these power brokers may vary in content, but they share a common form: "Do you want someone worse in this role? I can't accomplish anything if I resign or lose office." This reasoning represents strategy's ultimate defeat—abandoning the moral ground that gives any strategy its purpose. After all, we know when people say something like that, they really mean, “It was always going to be me.”

Nevertheless, choosing moral clarity over strategic calculation, over short-term tactics, requires more than individual courage—it demands revivifying our atrophied senses of community. Here are modest suggestions: Form or join circles of accountability and support media where strategic thinking isn't the default, where questions of right precede questions of advantage as our starting point. When someone asks, "But is this realistic?," respond with, "Is it right?" When some warn, "This is not how the game is played," you’ll remind them you’re not playing one. And when some say, “Let's wait for a better moment," put down the challenge: "If not now, when?"

The point isn't winning arguments or abdicating the strategic field to the worst among us. It’s about maintaining our ethical bearings when strategic thinking threatens to disorient us, to cause us to negotiate against ourselves, to put off until tomorrow what needs to be done today. As Samantha Hancox-Li put it here recently, “The act is the message.” As citizens, we can establish our non-negotiable lines now, before they're tested. If you work in government, name the directive you will not follow, the order you will refuse, the document you will not sign—and connect with others who share your principles, as many have already. If you're in technology, academia, or business, identify the project you will walk away from, regardless of its strategic value to a career that might not last much longer anyway. I do not write any of this with the nonchalance of the detached strategist: we all feel fear in such moments. But, there are millions behind us—only until now, the strategies of silence have left most unheard.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting we abandon thoughtful planning in favor of moral grandstanding—though surely we could use a lot more of the latter. Rather, we need to distinguish between two fundamentally different approaches to political action. The first treats strategy as an end in itself, divorcing it from moral foundations. This approach gamifies our politics and personal lives, reducing everything to calculated risks and strategic positioning. It's the mindset that justifies abandoning fundamental principles for short-term advantage and endlessly defers moral action while waiting for the "perfect moment." 

The second approach uses strategy as a vehicle for moral imperatives, not their replacement. The most effective movements for justice—see this other great Hancox-Li piece on the Civil Rights Movement—succeeded precisely because they paired moral clarity with purposeful strategy. What made their approach different from today's endless "strategizing" was that their choices flowed from and served their moral imperatives, rather than replacing them, while knowing certain tactics were simply off the table because they violated core moral commitments. This marriage of moral clarity with strategic action creates boundaries that the pure strategist lacks—lines they will not cross, electoral compromises they will not make, values they will not sacrifice at the altar of expediency. Thus, those depicted in Hancox-Li’s piece could map the terrain all the better because they had a moral compass; today’s tacticians give us the illusion of movement while we’re left going in endless circles.

More broadly, democratic systems inherently require strategic thinking—the art of building coalitions, timing initiatives, and maneuvering through institutional constraints. In fact, what’s worried many in recent weeks about the Trump administration has been its attacks on those institutions (Veterans Affairs, the Social Security Administration, etc.) most likely to undo its own coalition—as if it need not worry about such electoral matters anymore. Thus, what I'm critiquing is strategy divorced from moral foundations, where the means become the end. 

True political strategy serves as a vehicle for moral imperatives, not their replacement. The Civil Rights Movement exemplified this approach—their tactical decisions flowed from unwavering ethical principles, making their strategies more effective, not less. Today's hollow strategizing, by contrast, has abandoned this essential connection, leaving politicians endlessly calculating the precise polling impact of every statement while refusing to defend basic democratic principles. This strategic paralysis represents not political wisdom but moral abdication—generals forever preparing for a war they never intend to fight.

Critics will warn that following down this path without constant strategizing could mean losing everything in the fight for it all. No doubt, those memorialized in Lyon heard much the same thing. But in the battle for our souls, strategic accommodation gives up the fight before we’ve even begun. It’s the way forward not because it guarantees victory—the history of the French Resistance teaches us that—but because it preserves the values that make any victory worth having. Thus, choosing to speak and think in terms of moral clarity carries a certainty that no strategic gamble can provide: it means we haven't lost our souls. 

Featured image is "[The Chess Players]," artist unknown, 1850s.