the.com/low road

means To choose the ethically cheapest tactic — mockery, dirty tricks, cruelty — because it works faster than the honest, harder path.

from The phrase rides piggyback on the old Scottish ballad 'The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond,' where the dying soldier's spirit will 'tak the low road' home, arriving in the Highlands before his living companion on the high road. The geography there is literal, not moral. The ethical sense — low road as the shabby, underhanded option versus the dignified high road — grew up later as a separate metaphor, borrowing the song's shape without its story. It became especially common in 20th-century political and media language, where 'going low' or 'taking the low road' means trading principle for expedience.