A coarse world does not require us to become coarse; we can insist on our values even if they appear not to be widely shared. What’s so funny about peace, love, and under standing? (What’s so funny about truth, justice, and the Amer ican way?) I am not (and I will wager: you are not) a head of state or a polit ical operative; we are not required to be cyn ical or “realistic”. We can remain, with discipline, realists of a larger reality — the knowledge that the people who do this kind of stuff are already in hell.
Re: Le Guin’s “larger reality,” see also Flannery O’Connor: “The prophet is the realist of distances.”