There's a moment in every toxic organization when you can see it happening in real time: good people doing terrible things because they've confused loyalty with blindness. They're not evil people. They're not even bad people. They're people who have been so conditioned to follow, to trust, to never question authority, that they've forgotten how to think for themselves.
You see it in corporate boardrooms where executives nod along to strategies they know will hurt customers. You see it in hospitals where staff implement policies they know endanger patients. You see it in schools where teachers enforce rules they know damage children. And you see it, most dangerously, in moments when institutions we depend on become instruments of harm rather than protection.
The psychology is always the same. It starts with respect for authority—a good thing, generally speaking. It grows into dependence on that authority for identity and purpose. Then it metastasizes into something darker: the inability to distinguish between loyalty to a person and loyalty to principles, between following orders and doing right.
The Seduction of Unthinking Loyalty
The most insidious part isn't that people choose to do wrong. It's that they genuinely believe they're doing right. They've been told that questioning orders shows disloyalty. That hesitation reveals weakness. That the greater good sometimes requires doing things that feel wrong in the moment. They've been trained to suppress their moral instincts in favor of institutional allegiance.
This is how good people become complicit in systems that violate everything they once stood for. Not through dramatic moments of corruption, but through a thousand small surrenders of judgment. Each time they swallow their doubts. Each time they follow orders that make them uncomfortable. Each time they choose institutional loyalty over moral clarity.
The tragedy is that these people often joined these institutions because they believed in their mission. They wanted to serve something larger than themselves. They wanted to be part of something that mattered, something that made the world better. But somewhere along the way, the institution became more important than its purpose. The chain of command became more sacred than the principles it was supposed to serve.
When the System Turns on Itself
The most dangerous moment comes when the institution starts eating its own values. When the military talks about deploying against civilians. When law enforcement becomes a tool of political theater rather than public safety. When the very people sworn to protect constitutional principles are asked to violate them.
This is when you see the full horror of blind loyalty in action. People who have spent their entire careers believing they serve justice suddenly find themselves serving something else entirely. But they can't see it, because they've been trained not to see it. They've been taught that their job is to follow orders, not to evaluate them.
The most heartbreaking part is watching them convince themselves that what they're doing is still serving their original purpose. That somehow, by violating the principles they swore to uphold, they're actually defending them. The cognitive dissonance required for this mental gymnastics is staggering, but humans are remarkably good at protecting themselves from uncomfortable truths.
The Fear Factor
What keeps people trapped in this cycle isn't just conditioning—it's fear. Fear of being labeled disloyal. Fear of losing their identity, their community, their livelihood. Fear of standing alone against the institutional machine they've been part of for so long.
This fear is particularly powerful in hierarchical organizations where questioning authority isn't just discouraged—it's seen as a fundamental betrayal of everything the organization stands for. Where speaking up doesn't just cost you your job, it costs you your tribe, your sense of belonging, your entire social world.
So they stay quiet. They follow orders. They tell themselves that someone above them must know better, must have information they don't have, must be making decisions based on wisdom they can't see. They abdicate their moral responsibility to a system that has abdicated its moral purpose.
The Moment of Truth
But there always comes a moment when the choice becomes unavoidable. When the orders are so clearly wrong that no amount of rationalization can make them seem right. When following those orders would require betraying not just their conscience, but their oath, their profession, their deepest sense of who they are.
This is the moment that reveals character. Not the dramatic Hollywood moment of defying evil, but the quiet, terrifying moment of choosing between institutional loyalty and moral clarity. Between the safety of following orders and the responsibility of thinking for yourself.
Most people, when that moment comes, choose safety. They follow the orders. They trust the system. They hope someone else will take responsibility for the consequences. And by the time they realize what they've become part of, it's too late to stop it.
The Los Angeles Test Case
This isn't a hypothetical scenario. It's happening right now, in real time, on the streets of Los Angeles.
Over the weekend, President Trump deployed 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles—the first time in about 60 years that an American president has taken such action without a governor's consent. Not because of widespread chaos or breakdown of civil order, but because of protests against aggressive immigration raids that targeted day laborers and garment workers.
California Governor Gavin Newsom called the deployment unlawful, saying he planned to sue the administration over the deployment, adding that Trump "has created the conditions" around the protests. Legal experts describe it as "unprecedented, relying on an unorthodox use of a law aimed at quelling serious domestic unrest or an attack on the United States by a foreign power".
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went further, warning that the Pentagon was prepared to mobilize active-duty troops "if violence continues" in Los Angeles, saying the Marines at nearby Camp Pendleton were on "high alert". Marines whose battle honors include Iwo Jima and Fallujah, potentially deployed against Americans exercising their constitutional right to protest.
Good Soldiers, Bad Orders
The National Guard members walking the streets of downtown LA right now aren't villains. They're people who signed up to serve their communities during natural disasters and emergencies. They took an oath to defend the Constitution. Many of them probably joined specifically because they wanted to help people.
Now they're being asked to stand against protesters who are objecting to what they see as constitutional violations. They're being asked to be part of what the American Civil Liberties Union called "an inflammatory abuse of power" that is "putting Angelenos in danger, creating legal and ethical jeopardy for troops, and recklessly undermining our foundational democratic principle that the military should not police civilians".
These soldiers are facing exactly the moment I described earlier: the choice between institutional loyalty and moral clarity. Between following orders and following their oath. Between trusting the chain of command and trusting their constitutional responsibilities.
Some will convince themselves that they're protecting federal property, that they're maintaining order, that they're serving the greater good. They'll focus on the technical legality of their deployment rather than its constitutional implications. They'll trust that someone above them knows better.
Others will feel the weight of what they're being asked to do. They'll recognize that using military force against civilian protesters crosses a line that democracies aren't supposed to cross. They'll understand that "military interference in civilian government" is "inherently dangerous to liberty".
The Test of Our Time
What's happening in Los Angeles is more than a deployment of troops or a response to protests. It's a test of whether our institutions can resist authoritarian impulses when they come wrapped in the language of law and order. It's a test of whether the people within those institutions will choose principles over politics, conscience over compliance.
Senator Bernie Sanders told CNN that Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard to California is a sign that the country is moving "rapidly into authoritarianism," adding that "the future of this country rests with a small number of Republicans in the House and Senate who know better". But it also rests with every individual soldier, officer, and official who has to decide what their loyalty really serves.
The dark side of loyalty isn't about following bad leaders—it's about following any leader so blindly that you lose the ability to distinguish between legitimate authority and mere power. The question facing everyone involved in the LA deployment is simple: What are you really being loyal to?
The Constitution they swore to defend? Or the person giving the orders?
History will judge not just the leaders who gave these orders, but the followers who carried them out. And more importantly, it will judge those who found the courage to say no when no became the only moral answer.
The streets of Los Angeles are asking that question right now. The answer will define what American democracy becomes.