There are moments when moral clarity arrives so late that it risks being mistaken for courage.
In The Cost of Saying It Late, I examine the New York Times’ belated acknowledgment that January 6 was not a rupture from Trump’s presidency but its defining expression—and ask why it took so long to say so plainly. The essay argues that democratic erosion is not sustained by ignorance but by hesitation: by institutions that mistake caution for neutrality and delay for responsibility. When truth is named only after consequences harden, clarity loses its power to warn. This essay examines moral timing, institutional failure, and the price a democracy pays when its guardians speak plainly only once it is safe to do so.
~ Dunneagin
