Well, being ranked #275 on the list of 5 things I'm going to care about today means that I'm going to go "hmm that's interesting" and then move on with life.

The tendency to do evil things should be the overriding concern, not the relative ranking of them.

We shouldn't let people get away with doing minor bad things just because they're not as bad as other bad things we let them get away with.

Who is "we"? I have bills to pay and my own family to take care of and generally a thousand more important things to worry about.

Since you apparently have none of these things, you go get em tiger.

We as a society. If everyone just thought about their own pod because they can't be bothered about govt corruption then that's how dictatorship wins. MLK had a family too. We can't all be MLK but it doesn't mean we need to be okay with shitty things happening just because they're not as shitty as other things we let happen.

No, but it can make it unworthy of concern, same how an egg gone bad on the kitchen counter is not very important when the house is on fire

If one is naive to the fire in the house, the egg on the counter, as something worthy of concern, might get them to look around and see that their house is not actually suitable for use as shelter. People who are trying to put out the fire (or who are simply concerned about it while watching from a distance) might decide to point to the spoiled egg to spread awareness of the fire to the people inside.

I think you have to change or abandon the metaphor to make your point. These are not true statements of spoiled eggs and house fires, and so much so as to make a reasonable claim about institutions and malfeasance look absurd.

> These are not true statements of spoiled eggs and house fires, and so much so as to make a reasonable claim about institutions and malfeasance look absurd.

True, but I disagree with the conclusion. When I try to map it back to reality and it doesn't make sense, it is indeed an indictment of the analogy. But the fact I have to abuse the analogy to make that mapping coherent is not my problem; it's not my analogy.

However, within the context of the analogy, and if one can imagine that absolutely insane scenario, the logic holds.

An egg gone bad and a house fire are not the same sort of concern. A government agency doing two types of evil thing is more akin to ranking whether the small fire in the living room is more important than the slightly larger fire in the media room. It’s all fire in your house.