Do you think cowardice is wise and reasonable? - profitable and productive? - for a wink? for a promise? for a prayer? - and defensible?
Nothing Worth Fighting For
Sure.
Why else would cowardice be so common? so normal? so casually accepted as the acceptable morality of acceptable people?
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After all:
isn't courage unwise and unreasonable?
isn't this why the "advisors", "ear-holders", "closest of close inner circles" of dictators and tyrants are little more than barrels of wind-up plastic rictus-faced monkeys, clapping tin cymbals and bowing at the bidding of hands that wind them?
isn't courage unprofitable and unproductive?
isn't this why "influencers with followings", "high-net-worth individuals", "captains and titans of industry" sever and silence backbones in surrender?
for the loss and suffering experienced by everyday people being nothing really compared to state-sanctioned persecution and retaliation lobbed with prejudicial fervor at "the powerful"
legitimizes deferential capitulation in the name of powerlessness? and docile servility in the name of "fiduciary care"?
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After all:
isn't courage, in the end, futile?
for in the real world tangible interests of everyday people who experience measurable material consequences of "appeasement", is there ever a defensible argument for refusal? - denial? - protest? - opposition? - hostility?
which is to say,
is there ever a just raison d'être for warring against cowardice?
in the name of common men and women and children whose freedom have been traded for a wink? because nationalism is ever an ideological refuge for anti-them sentiments that run deep with abandon as "pride";
in the name of normal actions and thoughts and beliefs which have been disowned for a promise? because promises are ever the currency of deceivers who traffic in "truths" that lie;
in the name of acceptable principles that denounce and repudiate moral abdications cloaked in "the emperors' new prayers"? because pretentious sanctimony masks are ever the weapons of brittle extremists against human, secular, and ethical interests;
or is a war against cowardice impossible because winks by nationalists and promises by deceivers and prayers by extremists are above all:
eminently tenable?
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Needless to say:
it is not enough that the "closest of close inner circles" of dictators and tyrants yield their autonomies to their masters -
it is not enough that "powerful people" and "influential personalities" capitulate before pecuniary interests held hostage by state-endorsed harassment and revenge -
"the majority" too surrender their self-determination when they abide the bidding of hands that wind them at will and "followers" also renounce their self-respect when self-serving nakedly dispossesses their voices of backbone, but above all
when they casually accept the unacceptable, everyday people transform every corner of the world into kingdoms;
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kingdoms where it is customary;
kingdoms where it is encouraged;
kingdoms where it is celebrated;
to see nothing! and to say nothing! and to do nothing!
because courage is nothing but a "utopian idea", a "mind virus" that would plainly rob us of something more wonderful than a "utopia", more fruitful than a "mind":
mortals on thrones exercising absolute dominion over
meek and mute multitudes.
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As if such kingdoms,
wrought by people everywhere,
would cost us nothing worth fighting for.
As if the cost of cowardice isn't a casual evil that believes it's not.
Epilogue
We romanticize who we are.
And.
We romanticize who we aren't.
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Some of us imagine, as "communities" of "believers", we neither sow nor foment "discord"! because it isn't "divisive" to tout "community", "faith", "grace", and above all, "righteousness"!
As if "believers" are not everyday people, reveling in the uninhibited turpitude of nationalists who wink and deceivers who promise and extremists who pray as unqualified pillars of "righteousness", "grace", "faith", and above all, "community"!
Like nothing is real!
Like nothing matters!
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We romanticize courage.
And.
We romanticize cowardice.
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Some of us imagine, as "neighbors" and "citizens", we neither beget nor rouse "conflict"! because it isn't "nasty" to praise "entitled opinions", stoke "aggrieved feelings", amplify "newsfluencers", and above all, worship "truths" over "fake facts"!
As if vindictive rancorousness is "courageous";
as if belligerent saber rattling is "refreshingly honest";
as if people everywhere know "this is beautiful"!
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When seeing nothing and saying nothing and doing nothing becomes
wise and reasonable;
when kingdoms of mortals on thrones exercising absolute dominion over meek and mute multitudes become
profitable and productive;
when romanticization becomes
"the real truth", defensible and applauded;
we imagine
reality is fiction that believes it's not.
M
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Note
When there are calls to "tone down the rhetoric" because "this isn't who we are" - I think - Seriously? As if by calling "truths" that lie - "rhetoric" - everybody everywhere is on the same page with respect to self-censorship and "decorous speech" across "public halls, squares, and forums". Please. As if calls for unity vis a vis "we" (i.e. "who we are", "who we aren't", etc.) aren't self-important pretensions of "consensus" and "common ground". Come on.
The calling for the assassination of public servants isn't "rhetoric". It's an incitement to exact vengeance, justified by gordian rationalizations and arbitrary legitimizations, and amplified by provocateurs and contrarians, believers and followers, and zealots and extremists.
Notwithstanding that it bears emphatically iterating, "who we are" and "who we aren't", aren't a movie (i.e. Birth of a Nation, etc.) or a television show (i.e. Roots, etc.) or a song (i.e. "Dixie", etc.) or a poem (i.e. "The New Colossus", etc.). For "who we aren't" are main characters in make-believe Mayberry; for "who we are" are authors of "facts" and "truths", romanticized for narrative fictions,
as if nothing worth fighting for is real.
M
This is a powerfully argued and sobering piece.
ReplyDeleteThe central point—that cowardice has been universally rationalized and accepted as "wise and reasonable" and "profitable and productive"—is chillingly accurate. It forces us to confront the fact that the resulting "kingdoms of meek and mute multitudes" are not merely imposed, but actively chosen because the costs of courage are so deliberately inflated by those in power.
I especially appreciated your focus on the 'wink,' the 'promise,' and the 'prayer' as the three currencies used to purchase mass deference. It frames capitulation not as a single failure, but as a complex transaction built on various forms of ideological and pecuniary manipulation.
The question "is there ever a just raison d'être for warring against cowardice?" is what your entire post forces the reader to answer for themselves, and the clear implication is that anything less than refusal means surrendering "nothing worth fighting for." Thank you for never being anything other than who you are - iykyk.
The emphasis on "civility" is not necessarily a gesture toward peace, but rather a strategy to relinquish confrontational language that reveals uncomfortable truths. Importantly, one needs to differentiate between general "rhetoric" and the concrete implications of "incitement." When genuine incitement is mischaracterized as simply harsh rhetoric, it serves to protect discord and penalize candor.
ReplyDeleteThe pursuit of unity often leads to alignment with an idealized and fictitious self-image, which enables individuals to avoid confronting difficult realities. This approach reframes significant political issues as mere breaches of etiquette, thereby diminishing the urgency for substantive systemic change. There is considerable risk inherent in favoring reassuring falsehoods over challenging truths.
Societies, back to antiquity, use romanticism as a primary tool for moral, economic, and political self and mass deception, allowing reality to be negotiated until it no longer exists.
ReplyDeleteThe ultimate act of evasion has become the belief system that grants immunity and pardons from one’s own vices through moral exceptionalism. The conviction of one’s community, often defined by, “grace,” and “righteousness,” cannot be sowing discord is, in fact, the most effective alibi. It allows members to participate in the "turpitude of nationalists who wink and deceivers who promise" while operating under the self-sanctifying cover of "community." This is the intellectual collapse that permits institutions to actively foster corruption while maintaining their identity as moral purifiers.
Equally compelling is how we romanticize courage and cowardice. It’s time to expose the modern substitution of performative outrage for genuine moral risk. The "vindictive rancorousness" and belligerent "saber rattling" praised as "courageous" are not acts of opposition; they are acts of safe self-affirmation that solidify an echo chamber. Real courage is costly and unprofitable; performative anger is entertaining and validating. By celebrating the latter, we ensure that the fight for something real is continuously reduced to noise and emotional theater.
The moment self-deception becomes "defensible and applauded," the boundary between reality and fiction dissolves. When seeing, saying, and doing nothing becomes the profitable norm, the populace actively consents to a state where "reality is fiction that believes it's not." This is the ultimate cost of cowardice—not just the surrender of liberty, but the surrender of the capacity to even perceive that anything has been lost. It is a profound meditation on how mass denial creates the conditions for absolute power.
This is more than a political or societal commentary; it's a moral challenge. It makes clear that the cost of cowardice is not just personal shame, but the creation of a collective, casual evil. Thank you for making this argument with such clarity and intellectual force. It's a truly powerful piece. I can only hope to one day be a mere fraction of the goodness and truth you represent.
ReplyDeleteI was going to type a comment about rising up against tyranny, but then I realized I hadn't yet satisfied the demands of my cat—my own small domestic dictator. He needs his food bowl filled with salmon, which is infinitely more "profitable and productive" for me than an ideological war with a fluffy menace.
ReplyDeleteSo, I’m afraid I must retreat to the legions of the "meek and mute multitudes." My plastic rictus-faced monkey is clapping his tin cymbals wildly in surrender. After all, what is freedom compared to a purring and warm pile of fluff? Nothing worth fighting for, apparently.
The central tragedy here is that we have turned our virtues into armor—not to protect the innocent, but to protect our own egos and our own tribes. We use the language of the sacred to justify profane, and in doing so, we create a world where reality is fiction that believes it’s not.
ReplyDeleteCommunity and faith are often used as exclusionary tools rather than inclusive ones. When we tout righteousness while winking at the uninhibited turpitude of extremists, we aren't practicing faith; we are practicing branding. We have replaced the difficult, internal work of grace with a performative version of it that allows us to feel superior while ignoring the discord we sow in the real world.
Most biting insight is the romanticization of cowardice as courage, framing belligerence as refreshing honesty and vindictiveness as strength. When did the courageous lose the ability to speak truth to their own side and to admit when their neighbor is being wronged by their tribe, replacing it with belligerent saber rattling -the loud, safe noise of someone who knows their audience will applaud their rancor.
Do we really want to live in a world where doing nothing becomes wise and reasonable, the ultimate victory of mortals on thrones. When we allow ourselves to be seduced by fake facts or aggrieved feelings, we become a mute multitude. By choosing the comfort of a romanticized lie over the jagged edges of a difficult truth, we hand over our agency to those who profit from our division, mortals on thrones wielding rings of power designed to deceive all from the truth.
When romanticization becomes the truth, we lose the ability to solve problems. You cannot fix a wound if you have romanticized the infection as a badge of honor. By calling discord by the name of righteousness, we ensure that the discord never ends, because to stop the conflict would be to admit we were never actually righteous to begin with.
It’s time for a uncomfortable return to intellectual and moral honesty starting with acknowledging that everyday people are capable of great evil, that the entitled opinion is not a truth, and refusing to applaud meekness.
If we continue to romanticize who we aren't, we will eventually lose sight of who we are—leaving behind a kingdom of nothing that we insist was everything.
It is entirely reasonable to question the assumption that simply "toning down the rhetoric" will instantly restore civility. Presuming a universal agreement on norms, history, or even the definition of "truth" is not a practical approach in our context. Additionally, calls for unity may at times bypass necessary accountability, potentially minimizing genuine harm by appealing to a consensus that has never truly existed.
ReplyDeleteTakk for at du gjør livene våre rikere, kjærligere og sannere. Vi føler sorgen over tapet av den Grå Pilegrimen og ønsker ham hans rettmessige plass i Vanaheimr.
ReplyDeleteAv jord kom han, til jord skal han bli, og fra jord skal han oppstå igjen.
I shall always... miss my Waylan... who sipped Voss... munched on Caviar... but chose his... queen with his... heart of gold...
DeleteThe United States is not the “New Colossus” because the country’s political choices increasingly contradict the poem’s core promise. A nation that once imagined itself as a refuge now invests enormous energy in exclusion — from militarized borders to punitive immigration policies to rhetoric that treats newcomers as threats rather than human beings. These aren’t accidents; they’re the result of deliberate political agendas that elevate fear over compassion and nationalism over shared humanity.
ReplyDeleteThe “New Colossus” symbolizes moral confidence — a belief that strength comes from welcoming the vulnerable. Today’s political climate often flips that on its head, celebrating toughness while dismissing empathy as weakness. When leaders frame asylum seekers as invaders, when legislature restrict pathways to citizenship, and when public discourse treats diversity as a liability, the country isn’t living out Lazarus’s vision. It’s actively rejecting it.
If the poem once represented an aspiration, the modern United States reflects a struggle over whether that aspiration still matters. And the truth is blunt: a nation that prioritizes exclusion cannot credibly claim to be a beacon for the “huddled masses.” That’s not a poetic critique — it’s a political reality.
You are right! We’ve reached the end of this line! We have spent so much time romanticizing who we are that we’ve forgotten that, at our core, we are just monkeys with WiFi and a penchant for cruelty! I love that you call out those that talk about 'communities of believers' who think they don’t sow discord. REALLY?! !@#$ING REALLY!? Have you met a human being?! We sow discord for breakfast! We sow discord over the proper way to load a dishwasher! But no, we call it righteousness! We wrap our bigotry in a nice, warm blanket of faith and grace so we can sleep at night, while we spend our days reveling in the uninhibited turpitude of nationalists who wink! THANK YOU!!! YOU ARE !@#$ING AMAZING!!!
ReplyDeleteYou have really got me spun up with this great post... I just had to continue.
ReplyDeleteYou know what gets me? This whole idea that cowardice has somehow become the smart choice. The reasonable choice. As if the world is one big HR meeting where the safest thing you can do is nod your head, keep your mouth shut, and pray no one notices you have a spine. Because apparently courage is now… what? A luxury item? Like a yacht? “Sorry, I can’t afford courage this year, inflation’s too high!”
And then—then—we get told to “tone down the rhetoric.” Tone it down? TONE IT DOWN?! Have you seen the rhetoric out there? People are calling for the assassination of public servants like they’re ordering a pizza! And we’re supposed to act like this is just… spirited debate? No! That’s not rhetoric. That’s incitement. That’s violence with a thesaurus.
But no, no, we’re told, “This isn’t who we are.” Really? Because from where I’m standing, it looks EXACTLY like who we are. We’ve got people romanticizing themselves into these imaginary moral superheroes while simultaneously doing absolutely nothing. Nothing! They see nothing, say nothing, do nothing—like a whole nation of unplugged Roombas bumping into the same wall over and over again.
And the best part? We’ve turned cowardice into a virtue. We’ve dressed it up, slapped a bow on it, and called it “prudence.” Meanwhile, courage is treated like some kind of contagious disease. “Oh no, don’t stand up for anything, you might catch consequences!”
We’ve built these little kingdoms—tiny fiefdoms of fear—where the people on the thrones are just regular schmucks who figured out how to weaponize winks, promises, and prayers. And the rest of us? We’re the “meek and mute multitudes,” apparently. Great. Fantastic. Just what I always wanted: to live in a world where the biggest threat to democracy is not tyranny, but apathy wearing sweatpants.
And the kicker—the absolute kicker—is that we pretend there’s “nothing worth fighting for.” As if the cost of cowardice isn’t already eating us alive. As if surrendering your voice, your agency, your damn eyesight isn’t the most expensive thing you can do.
So yeah. If this is the world we’re building—where cowardice is wisdom, silence is virtue, and reality is whatever lie feels the nicest—then congratulations. We’ve created the one I hate more than anything else: a world so absurd, so backwards, so aggressively stupid… that it actually defies satire.
I’ve just finished reading this deeply sobering piece. It captures a sentiment I’m hearing more and more frequently that the ladder of opportunity hasn't just been pulled up, it’s been set on fire.
ReplyDeleteWe’ve reached a point where the institutions that are supposed to protect us - our government, our economy, our very sense of community have become so hollowed out by greed and "whatever-it-takes" politics that there is nothing left to defend.
This is the ultimate victory of the oligarchy.
When people stop believing that the system can be fixed, the people at the top win. They don't need you to agree with them; they just need you to be exhausted. They want you to believe that the "common good" is a relic of the past, and that the only thing worth doing is looking out for Number One.
But let’s be clear: this sense of "nothingness" isn't an accident. It is the direct result of forty years of stagnant wages, the systematic dismantling of unions, and a Supreme Court that has essentially legalized bribery through Citizens United. When the top 0.1% owns as much wealth as the bottom 90%, and that wealth is used to buy the very rules of the game, of course it feels like there’s nothing left to fight for.
But we cannot afford the luxury of despair.
I’ve often said that the most important thing you can do is to remain a "stubborn optimist." Not because things aren't bad, they are, but because the alternative is surrender. You describe perfectly what fills the vacuum when we stop demanding fairness, equality, and a seat at the table.
We are living through a Second Gilded Age. In the first one, people felt exactly this way. They felt crushed by the "Robber Barons." But they didn't give up. They organized. They created the Progressive Era. They demanded a New Deal.
It warms my heart this time of year when so much has been lost to hear the clear cry from the sky of your horn!
Get off your asses! There is the person standing next to you. There is the child who deserves a planet that isn't burning and an economy that doesn't exploit them. There is the fundamental American promise that we are all in this together.
The "nothing" is a lie told by those who have everything. Don't believe them. The fight for a society that works for the many, not just the few, is the only fight that has ever truly mattered.
Stay loud. You make us all proud!