If you're wondering how you got to "look how good I am for not holding a murderous cannibal accountable," let me explain: First, society loses its moral grammar. People use the words "good" and "bad," but they no longer mean anything. Second, citizens lose the ability to tell wolves from sheep. Because they believe there is no objective "good," they have no justification for expecting people to be "good." (Again, what does that even mean?) Third, psychopaths and other pathological individuals start being able to operate within the herd. Nobody can sense that they are "bad," but the wolf is smarter and stronger than the sheep. These pathological individuals then start outcompeting the sheep for positions of power and influence. Once in those positions, they warp the hiring criteria to reward fellow pathological personalities. This small minority (think Dolores Umbridge and her cabal from Harry Potter) torments the well-adapted and sane until they are driven from the institutions. Anyone with loyalties other than to the ideology and the movement is removed. Eventually, all that is left are psychopaths and cowards too scared to oppose them. It is within this environment that the psychos now feel safe enough to "remove their mask of sanity." In the end, social status is not awarded to the virtuous but to the depraved.