Since the Bush and Trump administrations, there has not a lot of reflection about how the system is much less able and much less willing to deal with rampant criminality, even criminality which threatens to overturn the entire system. Mostly a defense of it all.
Contrary to that recent editorial in The Fucking Newspaper, shunning people is Good, Actually, and there isn't enough expectation that powerful bad people are shunned by other less bad powerful people.
You don't have to be collegial to that racist pundit, or former Trump officials, for example.
Everyone in the system has a little bit of power. Being able to tell these assholes to fuck off to the moon might be the only power most people have, but it's something.