Generation of Cowards

On the right, with generations of money, they strive for more money, and power, and prestige. On the left, with generations of education, they mainly squawk while propounding visions of a better world, technologically, philosophically, esthetically.

Both sides function on the same, unspoken, unacknowledged motto:

"Risk not, want not."

On the right: pander easily and smoothly to the richer while feeding the false bait of fake faith to the poor, and all will be well.

On the left: hoard degrees, tenure, and piles of published pages and mountains of greater gadgets and live happily off the royalties and honoraria.

And always, on both sides, take no risks.

On both sides, shut your trap locally but shout globally and ignobly at unfair firings, trampled rights, unjust wars.

All is well as long as the wrongs are in your backyard but not mine and I can object loudly with hollow bravery. But let the wrongs impinge the least little bit on my sinecure and you’ll find my lips well-zipped.

How cowardly is this generation?

So cowardly that they—you, we!—read such charges and are genuinely puzzled: Who could she be talking about? Oh. I get it. She’s talking about Our Enemies and Their Leaders.

So cowardly that we do not grasp even the nature of corwardice, much less the reality of our own past and present daily, monthly, yearly acts of cowardice at all levels, from followers to leaders, at home, at work, at school, at church.

No risk, remember?

Poseurs all.

Surface matters. Costume conceals truth, both from the wearer and from the world: the right with its SUVs and gated golf-course communities, the left with its Priuses and smug solar panels. The right with its holy books, the left with its unholy books. The right with its false prophets and palaces of false piety (neon now!), the left with its false artists and palaces of failed beauty (titanium forever!).

Courage, for the truly put upon, starts with taking the next breath and builds and builds from there into empyreans undreamt of by the cowardly, who on the right name airports after their own kind and elect draft-dodgers as presidents and who on the left make heroes of prurient patriarchs and heap laurels on feckless poets and minstrel-show novelists.

Ambien-besotted, Welbutrin-becalmed, both breeds of cowards are masters of feel-good days (mission accomplished! masterpiece written!) but cross the threshold of sleep with the utter unvoiced terror of the truly primitive.

Thus it is that a culture, a civilization, a world of cowardly incompetence hurtles blindly toward multiple disasters: It’s not MY fault, it’s THEIRS.