The Failure of Moral Courage, Volume One

“Moral courage refers to the ability to act in alignment with one’s ethical beliefs, even in the face of personal risk, adversity or social pressure. It involves standing up for what is right, whether challenging an unjust system, speaking out against harmful behavior, or resisting the temptation to compromise one’s values for convenience and safety.

Moral courage is often needed when there’s a conflict between doing what is ethically right and what’s socially or personally easy. In situations where going along to get along or staying silent may seem like the path of least resistance, moral courage becomes essential to drive positive change, uphold justice and maintain personal integrity.”

The failure to exert moral courage or call to account and challenge existing systems or persons of power can be the hinge factor or the axis determinant of the failure or success of individuals, organizations, and nations. The failure of people to speak out against injustice, oppression, and abusive behavior where bullies or strongmen threaten, kill, steal, grift, falsely demonize, misidentify the real enemies of their constituencies, and grieve their way to dominating power in our current American system is a primary case in point.

The failure of the Republican Party under the leadership of Mitch McConnell who had a chance to impeach Donald Trump but didn’t, is a failure of nerve to bring a rightful conviction instead of clearing the way for Trump’s second term in office.

Is it easier to passively go along to get along than express outrage at the risk of being demonized and ostracized as a whistleblower than to talk about how our government is being systematically dismantled? Let’s face it. The truth is that the United States of America is being destroyed by rogues in high places who have sold out their American birthrights. trashed the constitution, placed party over country, one man over the people, and human greed over human need while remaining silent, which enabled the  the hostile takeover of America.

Add to this rueful reality the willful collaboration of legions of supporters on the inside colluding with enemies on the outside to force the American people into an authoritarian system of government in the name of virtue but actually in vice. What we have here is a form of political hard-headedness instigating class warfare to break all social contracts for the common good coupled with a hard-heartedness driven by the politics of hatred and deprivation leading to the moral atrophy and malaise of our beloved country, which has already begun to emaciate the will of the people and the power of the morally courageous to stand up, fight back and resist the final takeover of our American System and way of life.

The goal of government is to protect all its citizens not just a select few. The goal of politics is to pursue and establish liberty and justice for all citizens not just the rich and powerful.

Such political chaos begins as fantasy and ends as farce as it extols the American body politic as having new clothes with an emperor who has no clothes while the Statue of Mother Liberty is symbolically stripped of her garments. Cap this travesty with the virulence of malicious disinformation that malevolently shades itself as some grand new hallelujah scheme of national salvation and reconstruction injected into the American body politic, making our Democratic Constitutional Republic far worse than what it should or deserves to be by power-hungry quislings who cravenly fail to resist the high tides of tyranny threatening the ultimate dissolution and destruction of our Democratic Constitutional Republic and American Representative Democracy.

The spectacle of shame now unfolding in American power politics where cruelty which is the point, ignominy, and bombast of Republicans meretriciously violate the norms and laws of American political deference, discourse, and protocols with blasphemous and hypocritical invocations of Christ as a pretext for demonic behavior are merely mutant forms of iniquitous self-idolatry swelling Republicans with false pride. As they swagger in self-congratulating hubris, one-up Democrats and hoodwink their MAGA base into believing that their Messiah has finally arrived to save the day as he promises to keep His promises to make America great again they have failed to speak the truth but instead airbrush the perils of what this all will become.

The sad reality is Donald J. Trump could turn this all around and truly help make America greater by renouncing and abandoning this reckless program of grievance politics he is now initiating domestically and around the globe.

Contrary to the recent bald-faced lies claiming since Trump’s second win Republicans Republicans are the vanguard of the working class and Democrats have failed to serve the everyday people. Why aren’t more Democrats calling out this meretricious buffoonery? Why? Why do they largely sit silent amid the cavalcades of lies?  Have Democrats been persuadeed to stand down from such retorts by party bosses? Or is it that such behavior is too risky; that it violates the rules of genteel political civility and it’s better to go along to get along than not go along to get along?  Or is it because it’s safer to conduct political vespers in muted whispers when all hell is breaking loose? Are the hushed tones of reticence preferable to the crescendos and boisterous outcries of righteous protest? Could it be that they are registering protests and showing moral courage but biased right-wing media are not covering and airing those stories? Some Democrats demonstrate moral courage like Adam Schiff, Bennie Thompson, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, the squad and numerous others. But where are the others?

Silence is not required, nor are the whispers of pallid, gray, colorless monotones instead of righteous indignation and relentless verbal fire calling out the lies and chicanery of the GOP? Compared to the 30,000 lies Trump has told over the last eight years, the  response ratio of vehement outcries from Democrats appears anemic by comparison.

  A lie is still a lie is still a lie. Where is the “ouch” or the “no you not lie your way to power and not be held to account?” Why haven’t more press conferences been called by Democrats to clarify the truth of the battery of lies when Rome is burning, and the country is blatantly stolen right from under us?

Neither silence nor neutrality are viable long-term options. “So, let’s just be neutral,” some say, and it will all go away. Ignore your rights and they will go away and so will your country because eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Silence smacks of endorsement of lies or laissez-faire and fairly lazy neutralism. Neutrality means remaining in “park,” which is a stationary position. It means neither moving forward nor back in reverse. It means rusting out rather than wearing out. Put the car in drive and move forward, man. Choose to be neutral or in the middle of the road all you want, but you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

Friends. I understand the necessity of taking the high road in human conflict situations, especially in applying Satyagraha nonviolence strategies and tactics to resolve personal and collective problems. Sometimes it’s good not to pay the price of the ticket. But waiting too long means the train has already left the station. Sometimes cool is cool but other times cool is not what’s needed, even if the thermometer reads, “Hell!”  But that’s not always feasible or plausible. The variety and shades of the oppositional beatdowns should never mean total submission and bow down by repressing and sublimating genuine outrage unless it’s living to fight another day. Moral courage is a strident necessity in facing off with forces of relentless and persistent evil, especially when discourse is encrusted in polite, palatable oxymorons uttered by mindless and obstinate opponents who will stop at nothing until they destroy every vestige of civility and every iota of humanity while American Liberal Democracy perishes face down in defeat.

I say it’s okay to be cool in the face of adversaries but don’t be colorless in the fights of your life. Show verve and verse. Speak in soft poetry and loud prose! Use other words if necessary.

The great Andrew Young said, “Staying calm under fire is necessary for your survival. It is also necessary for your success. But it’s hard not to get emotional when people are trying to kill you……In our emotional and volatile environment, it was important for us to come off as reasonable, sane and patriotic cause we were. We just wanted America to be what America said it was supposed to be on paper.”

Dr. J Peter Hotez says, “Don’t forget…..Doers of evil keep off when they know that their evil acts would face fierce opposition.”

No time for polite curtsying when your country is being highjacked by grand theft Republicans, who are the New Architects of American Mainstream Misery who are the sources of virtually everything damnable and dehumanizing in our nation when they failed to impeach Donald Trump; failed to hold to account the Fossil Fuel Industry or Big Oil, cosigning policies and legislation leading to and prolonging climate change and climate destruction now burning up our planet, It means selling off public lands to private corporations to drill for more oil. It is failure to pass meaningful gun legislation, wickedly proposing the abolishment, theft and ransacking of Medicare, Headstart Programs, Social Security and Medicaid; it is illegally gerrymandering districts and suppressing people’s right to vote; it is the persecution, prosecution, objectification, otherization and thingification of blacks, browns, poor whites, women, Asians, Hispanics, Latinos and Chicanos, the disabled, the poor, agnostics, atheists, Muslims, Jews, Arabs, Palestinians, the American Labor Movement, castigating critically-creatively thinking intellectuals, repudiating Indigenous Communities, trashing and smashing the rights of women, denigrating LGBTQ+ communities, killing progressive education, banishing reading and writing, denouncing and abhorring progressive learning and thinking among students seeking to not repeat the bad experiences of American History;  it is threatening to kill the vice-president because he didn’t commit treason; it is book banning, and everything that pulverizes life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and catapults America back to the wistful days of Antebellum America.

In essence, we are dealing with political adversaries who are not well, but gleefully selfish, hateful, malignant, megalomaniacal, cry-baby, grievance-prone, narcissistic types who care nothing for nothing and their private interests, where they privatize profits for the wealthy and socialize costs for everyday taxpayers to foot the bill. In contrast, the uber-wealthy arrogantly vanquish and desecrates the common interests of the people by proliferating lunacy, political vagrancies and bad mindedness.

As Randall McMurphy says  in “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, “I must be crazy to be in a looney bin like this….“All I know is this: nobody’s very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.”

All the Republicans appear to do is stonewall meaningful legislation purportedly good for all and pretend they love America while continuing to destroy America with mindless political Zombieism, and feckless acquiescence to the doom, gloom, and demise of our constitutional order. All they want is more tax breaks for the rich while giving hell to the poor and pretending to be Christ-like. Not a single one of the MAGA group toadies or Republican minions has stood up and spoken truth to power to break the yoke of slavery and intimidation from persons who are preparing the way and leading the country to hell with more takeaways from those who have already been taken away and giving everything else to the uber-wealthy who have not paid their fair share to the commonwealth of America. Where is Teddy Roosevelt when you need him? Many are speaking out and fighting back.

And what about the Oligarchs? Don’t they have enough dat gummed money with tax breaks and government welfare subsidies? Do they have to suck up all the air in the universe so that nobody is breathing but them? What’s wrong with these folks? So noble in wealth and prosperity but so ignoble when laborers try to organize for a living wage in their companies. Why would rich corporations turn their backs on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)? All, except Costco, believe in taking care of their employees by offering living wages, health care, vacations, and pregnancy leave. Costco is the gold standard of corporate empathy while other corporations lower standards by cheating and punishing workers who build wealth and grow empires. What happened to home training? How about doing all the good you can in all the ways you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, in all the places you can, as long as ever you can?

We’d better believe our lying eyes and open our mouths to say something.

We’d better believe that lies will have traveled around the world before the Truth puts its shoes on.

Says Terri Mallow in Elia Kazan’s masterpiece, On the Waterfront, “You don’t understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am. let’s face it. It was you Charley.”

If you can’t be somebody, say something that will get the attention of the opposition.

Face off and speak up to your nemesis and adversaries. Just don’t sit there sulking, wishing, and lamenting about personal failures and losses of power. Open your mouth for something other than doughnuts and a Happy meal, man. Say something! Break the yokes of bondage by demonstrating moral courage and doing what is right by the people and your country.

When a Republican politician was asked why he did not support more housing for the homeless, his response?, “There’s no upside to it!”

Political malpractice is what we now have with malignant narcissism as a core value masking itself under the banner of white Christian Nationalism fostered by white insecurity cloaked in white sheets with holes.

Throughout American history, there have been numerous instances where people or groups failed to stand up and speak out against injustice, inequality, or oppression. Some of these moments were due to fear, complacency, or the overwhelming power of the dominant social, political, or economic forces. Here are key moments in U.S. history where people either failed to act or were too silenced to speak out:

1. Slavery and the Compromise of 1850

• Context: While many abolitionists fought against slavery, much of the nation remained silent or complacent, especially in the southern states. The Compromise of 1850, which included the Fugitive Slave Act, required even northern states to return runaway slaves.
• Failure to Act: Many political leaders, even those in the North, failed to speak out forcefully against the extension of slavery into new territories or the brutal enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act.
• Consequence: This silence allowed slavery to persist and expand, fueling the Civil War.

1. The Japanese-American Internment (1942-1945)

• Context: After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government forcibly relocated and incarcerated around 120,000 Japanese-Americans, most of whom were U.S. citizens.
• Failure to Act: Despite widespread knowledge of the injustice, many Americans remained silent or supported the internment, while others were too fearful to speak out against the government’s actions.
• Consequence: It took decades for the government to officially apologize and compensate surviving internees, while the damage to lives and communities was immense.

1. The Civil Rights Movement (1950s-1960s)

• Context: Despite the growing momentum of the Civil Rights Movement, there were still widespread failures to speak out against segregation and racial violence.
• Failure to Act: Many white Americans and even some African Americans were too fearful or hesitant to speak out, especially in the South, due to the threat of violence, economic retribution, or social ostracization.
• Consequence: The failure of many individuals and groups to speak out allowed systemic racism to persist, despite landmark events like the March on Washington or the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

1. McCarthyism and the Red Scare (1947-1957)

• Context: During the early Cold War, Senator Joseph McCarthy led a campaign accusing government officials, entertainers, and ordinary citizens of being Communists or Communist sympathizers.
• Failure to Act: Many people, including intellectuals, politicians, and ordinary citizens, remained silent or supported the witch hunts out of fear of being associated with Communism.
• Consequence: The resulting hysteria ruined countless lives, destroyed careers, and violated civil liberties.

1. The Vietnam War (1955-1975)

• Context: The United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War was controversial, and by the late 1960s and early 1970s, widespread anti-war protests had emerged.
• Failure to Act: Many people either supported the war or remained silent in the face of rising casualties and questionable government justifications. Even within the government, voices like those of Martin Luther King Jr. were muted by mainstream media and political elites.
• Consequence: The war led to the loss of thousands of American and Vietnamese lives, and the failure to challenge the war early on resulted in deep divisions within American society.

1. The Trail of Tears (1838-1839)

• Context: The forced relocation of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral lands in the southeastern U.S. to territories west of the Mississippi River.
• Failure to Act: Many Americans, including those in positions of power, were complicit in the forced removal. While some individuals spoke out against it, such as the abolitionist and Cherokee ally John Ross, the majority of white Americans supported the policy, either through indifference or active support.
• Consequence: The relocation led to the deaths of thousands of Native Americans due to disease, starvation, and exposure.

1. The Silent Majority During the Civil Rights Struggles

• Context: Many white Americans during the 1950s and 1960s, especially in the South, either supported segregation or remained silent about the civil rights struggles of Black Americans.
• Failure to Act: This “silent majority” did not speak out against the discriminatory policies or violence being used against Black protesters, and many even supported the racial status quo, whether through explicit racism or passive indifference.
• Consequence: This widespread silence prolonged the fight for civil rights and helped maintain a racially unequal society for decades.

1. The Anti-Slavery Movement in the North

• Context: While abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and William Lloyd Garrison were vocal and dedicated, many in the North were ambivalent or outright opposed to the abolition of slavery.
• Failure to Act: Many in the North were more focused on economic or political stability rather than confronting the institution of slavery, which they saw as a Southern issue.
• Consequence: The lack of widespread Northern outrage contributed to the persistence of slavery, leading to the Civil War and the continued dehumanization of African Americans.

1. Women’s Suffrage Movement (Late 1800s-Early 1900s)

• Context: Although many women fought for voting rights in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many individuals, including women, were either opposed to or silent about women’s right to vote.
• Failure to Act: Many women accepted their second-class status and did not speak out for equal rights, while others, such as some suffragists, faced public ridicule for their activism.
• Consequence: It took decades of organized protests and efforts by a small group of women’s suffrage leaders before the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920.

1. The LGBTQ+ Rights Struggle Pre-Stonewall (Before 1969)

• Context: Before the Stonewall Riots in 1969, LGBTQ+ people faced severe discrimination, criminalization, and social exclusion.
• Failure to Act: Many people either ignored or supported laws and social norms that discriminated against LGBTQ+ individuals. The LGBTQ+ community itself often had to remain hidden due to the severe consequences of being open about their identity.
• Consequence: The silence and fear of many led to a lack of organized resistance, but the Stonewall Riots sparked the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, even though many voices had been silenced before then.

1. The Tulsa Race Massacre (1921)

• Context: A white mob attacked the prosperous Black community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, killing hundreds of Black residents and destroying thousands of Black-owned homes and businesses.
• Failure to Act: Local, state, and national authorities largely ignored or actively suppressed the atrocity. The white community was either complicit or indifferent, and the victims received little justice.
• Consequence: It took nearly a century for the massacre to receive widespread acknowledgment and for survivors to receive compensation.

1. Labor Rights and Worker Exploitation (19th and Early 20th Century)

• Context: The rise of industrialization in the U.S. led to the exploitation of workers, including poor wages, dangerous working conditions, and long hours.
• Failure to Act: Many businesses, politicians, and even citizens either ignored or were complicit in the exploitation. The failure of many working-class people to organize or speak out against these conditions delayed the establishment of labor rights protections.
• Consequence: This exploitation continued until labor movements, such as those led by the American Federation of Labor (AFL), gained momentum in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Conclusion

In these cases, silence, fear, or outright opposition contributed to the perpetuation of injustices, and in many cases, it took decades—or even longer—for meaningful change to occur. These moments in history remind us of the importance of standing up, speaking out, and not remaining silent in the face of injustice, oppression, dehumanization, and inequality, which requires not dastardly failures of nerve but the audacity to stand up and speak out against to effect the positive change in the world that we want for all.

The only way for evil to prevail is when the good remains silent. What we need is more moral courage and the audacity to do what is good and right for all America which is still our beloved country.

FFFFYTD

Carlyle Fielding Stewart, January 28, 2025