One of the most annoying aspects of social media over the last year has been the incessant virtue signaling over the conflict in Ukraine. The prevalence of flags in handles, hashtags in bios, and accusations of supporting Vladimir Putin have been relentless.

If one dares to even suggest that we need a better plan than the current one in dealing with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they are immediately labeled a traitor. And I’m not just talking about online trolls. Former congressman (because Democrats betrayed him) Adam Kinzinger, for example, has long played that game, making some of the dumbest arguments imaginable.

Of course, Ukrainian President Volydymr Zelensky has fallen into that habit as well, often lecturing Americans on why they must continue to shovel money into his country without any articulated end game or strategy. Support for Ukraine isn’t so much the issue as is the sense of entitlement. It just rubs many people the wrong way.

Then there are the online celebrities who swear they are saving the planet by emoting on Twitter. Enter author Stephen King, who decided to challenge Elon Musk on Ukraine while melting down over his blue checkmark on Twitter (because that’s apparently a thing people do now).

How it started. How it’s going. pic.twitter.com/CBFYaI4nHU

— The Doctor (@TennantRob) April 23, 2023

Game. Set. Match.

Look, I’m not writing this article just because Musk got another dunk in on some left-winger. That happens nearly every day. But I think it’s important to note the attitude King showcases and how corrosive it is to society. This idea that you must obsess over the “current thing” or you are somehow lacking in moral stature is not an American value. Quite the opposite, in fact.

In this case, Musk has given an astronomical amount of money to the Ukranian war effort. That’s come in the form of donations of the Starlink system, which has proven vital for communications on the battlefield. Despite his generosity, Musk has been mocked and maligned, though, even by Ukrainian officials. Apparently, giving away $100 million to a country in need is small potatoes compared to affixing a Ukrainian flag to one’s Twitter handle.

Musk asks the right question of King: What exactly has he done to help Ukraine? Because there’s an army of people expressing faux virtue while doing nothing more than smacking their sausage fingers on a keyboard. That’s not helping Ukraine. It’s just fluffing one’s own ego, and that attitude has become endemic in American society.

It’s corrosive because it presumes that rhetoric is somehow more valuable than taking tangible action. That’s how you get a political environment where politicians would rather say the right thing than do the right thing.

Meanwhile, there are serious people out there doing serious things to help others around the world. King represents so many on the far left (and even some ostensibly on the right) who talk a big game but don’t deliver one ounce of value to anyone but themselves. Musk, whatever one thinks of his politics and public persona, continually shows the emptiness of their rhetoric.