Virtue signaling is rampant in the age of the internet because it's often a quick way to get goodwill, and that goodwill can translate into a myriad of things, including money and power.
Seeing as how money and power are two things Democrats covet most, you'll often see them utilizing the art of the virtue signal.
But the thing about virtue signaling is that it's like a credit card with a no-payment for a year policy, but an extremely high interest rate. At some point, the bill will come due, and you're going to have to pay for your purchases... one way or another.
Democrats are finding this out the hard way, and 2025 seems to be a year where those demands of payment are hitting them all at once.
One of the chief virtue signalers in America today is California Governor Gavin Newsom, a man who has a habit of speaking honey into the ear, then stabbing everyone in the back. He talks like a man who cares, then demonstrates how much he doesn't on a constant basis.
As my colleague Bob Hoge wrote on Friday, Newsom's governing has cost the people of California much. He's focusing on redistricting battles while homes in the Palisades go unrepaired or rebuilt after the fires that raged out of control on his watch consumed the area. Businesses in his state still haven't recovered, thanks to COVID mandates that he, himself, didn't think should apply to him.
The list of things wrong with California under Newsom is long, and I recommend you check out Hoge's article to see it for yourself.
Read: When Your Governor Abandons Your State to Try to Become a Taylor Swift-Type Social Media Influencer
Newsom is a well-known name across the nation, with YouGov noting that 75 percent of Americans know who he is. The problem is, only 32 percent of people like him, while 25 percent don't like him at all. Despite the positive attitudes toward him only slightly outweighing the negative, the "very unfavorable" view of Newsom beats out the "somewhat favorable" by 27 to 21 percent, respectively.
Since Newsom's time as governor is up in 2026, his political aspirations are going to have to go national, with an aim for the White House, and I'm calling it now: He's going to be the Democrats' primary nominee, and he's going to lose to the Republican candidate (likely Vance) catastrophically. Why?
Because while California leftists were perfectly happy to let Newsom virtue signal all over the state because it set the tone to allow them to do it too; everyone else sees that Newsom's virtue signaling created a smoking hell hole of drug addiction and homelessness that people fled.
That 75 percent of people contain a very large percentage who know Newsom's honey talk is all empty. He never paid his virtue signal debt, and he's going to suffer for it.
This isn't an uncommon pattern either.
On Friday, I wrote an article about how virtue-signaling leftists are harming women by punishing men who approach them for romantic purposes, whether it's on the social or governmental level.
This is a virtue signal of epic proportions, as it's all big talk around protecting and helping women. The prevailing leftist narrative is that women hate it when men approach to talk them up, and that even the most innocent and good-natured attempt to get a date is equal to the creep cat-calling a woman. For misandrists and modern feminists (redundant labels at this point), efforts to keep the men at bay and punish those who cross the line make them seem noble and protective of women.
Men who even demonstrate protective instincts are punished. Daniel Penny, the men in the U.K. who jumped a migrant exposing himself to women and children, and even DOGE staffer Edward Coristine (aka "Big Balls) were all punished in some way by the left for rising up to protect women.
Yet, women are openly upset that men no longer approach them for romantic purposes, have stopped flirting by and large, and what's more, never seem to be around to help when needed.
The price for the left's virtue signaling against men is coming due... for women, and not just the ones guilty of virtue signaling, but the ones who don't buy into that nonsense and don't see men as societal villains. They all stand to suffer loneliness... or something worse, and the fruits of the left's virtue signaling are already coming true in some pretty awful ways.
And if you need one final example, look no further than the 2024 election.
The Democrat Party did almost nothing but virtue signal for four years, with their primary virtue being that they weren't Donald J. Trump. Almost everything they stood for boiled down to that one thing.
What did that position get the people? Well, now Trump is busy cleaning up their mess from the White House.
The bill came due in the 2024 election, and the Democrats had no way to pay it, so they paid with power, the one thing they covet most.
And ultimately, that's what you end up paying for virtue signaling: the thing most important to you. Newsom and the Democrats lost power, and modern feminists lost the happiness and freedom of women.
If you signal a virtue... make sure you actually possess it.
