In Chomsky’s opinion, the collapse of the arena of rational discourse is one of the biggest existential threats today, that drives the Doomsday Clock toward midnight. The outbursts in social media, conspiracy theories, AI-generated misinformation and disinformation, societal and/or political polarization, but especially ideological biases of intellectuals and media, in general a growing distrust of information, all are signs of this phenomenon. In this article we argue in favor of the idea that these signs can be interpreted as somewhat more subtle semiotic phenomena, effects of the displacement of rational discourse from the area of communicative action, which involves interpretative cooperation and social action oriented towards understanding, to the area of strategic action oriented rather towards success. In this sense, we present an interdisciplinary research framework, which integrates facial expression analysis, theory of emotional arcs and moral psychology theory, which allows us to investigate the moral-emotional foundations of the discursive behavior of political actors. The results indicate a more pronounced dynamic of emotional engagement and moral content of the discourse of political actors who show dialogical openness and are oriented towards communicative rationality and reasonableness, compared to those who claim interpretative cooperation but engage in the negotiation of meaning in a strategic manner.Semiotic approaches have found that balance between the apparently contradictory models of guaranteeing the rationality of interpretation with those of intersubjective, reasonable interpretation of social reality. In this way, it offers a chance for dealing appropriately with major crises and for preventing a global catastrophe, or “doomsday”.