This transition is common: one can’t see one’s choices as simply selfish or personal or one would never have the strength to do what ultimately needs to be done. In the way that it became important for Thiel to see Gawker as singularly bad, the conspirator takes up, often without consent, the mantle of defending (or freeing) a number of other people as his or her real reason for proceeding. It is a sort of self-serving selflessness, a shield against what
