Hysteria
I went to a toy and game store with my children recently. The place was full of families buying gifts, playing board games, and spending time together. After The Great Hysteria, it’s always nice to see this sort of thing.
As we went to leave – and I am not exaggerating, though some details are slightly altered – two green-haired men in drag and giant, poorly fitting masks entered the store. They met someone they knew and began talking loudly. As it turned out, the two were teachers in local government schools, and they couldn’t help but complain about the horror of being compelled to teach in person amongst a population that refuses to be more than 85% vaccinated. The cowardice was palpable.
Our chief problem today is cowardice. That seems too simple, right? “We have a lot of problems,” I hear you say. “The country is godless, it slaughters the unborn, it hates God, it hates children, it’s hysterical and the government is oppressive and wicked.”
I agree with you. But I think at root, our problem is cowardice brought to critical levels.
Scripture is filled with calls to bravery and boldness. Paul tells us to “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” (1st Corinthians 16:13). Cowardice multiplies our trouble. “The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion” (Proverbs 28:1). To be a coward has severe consequences. “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8).
The world is full of sinners doing sinful things. God can, and has occasionally, intervened directly to deal with this problem, but He often uses those who love Him to mitigate or oppose evil. Cowardice is the vice that keeps Christians from accomplishing that mission.
Twin Vices
Sin loves company, and so we shouldn’t be surprised that cowardice rarely appears alone. In America, we often pair our cowardice with laziness. Part of that is the sheer convenience; there’s nothing more convenient than laziness. But another part is that cowardice inspires laziness. We don’t get up and do something about the evil we see because we’re cowards.
That means the government can imprison and torture people for a mild, moderately obnoxious protest like the one last January and our reaction is to shrug. It’s why the state can slaughter millions of unborn children and we complain. And we only complain. It’s why we see bad things happening and our response is to comment about how angry we are. We’ve done our part. Our cowardice makes us lazy, and our laziness manifests as slacktivism.
The cure to our laziness is action, but cowardice makes action impossible. We have to deal with that problem, first.
The Shattering
Since March 2020, something interesting has been happening around the world. Something I haven’t seen in my entire life, nor my grandparents in theirs. Governments, large businesses, and media organizations are losing their ability to hide their evil intentions. They can’t stop, they won’t stop, and they don’t care anymore who knows about it. They now shout their evil plans and we can all hear them. From vaccine “passports” to the Great Reset to election fraud to censorship, our latter-day villains are increasingly obvious.
There are still many who can’t admit what they see. This, I suspect, is in part because they’ve already been shamed into lying about obvious things, like that a man in a dress is not a woman, or that homosexuality is contrary to nature, or that being white is not a moral failing. When you surrender to the pressure to tell little lies, you’ve blinded yourself. It’s no wonder you can’t see what’s happening.
Still, I think an even larger number of people can see what’s happening. Their worlds are shattering, and that’s a great time to beat down vices. When you’re comfortable, it’s easy to justify your own failings. When you see runaway inflation and political corruption on a Biblical scale, and when your job is hanging in the balance over injecting yourself with an experimental medication for a cold virus, you begin to realize that some nobility and virtue are your only options. And now, with children being the next class of victims, the boldness that’s been building will have casus belli to make our aristocracy regret the past 18 months.
If our crisis really is the poison of cowardice, then the antidote has already been administered.
Antemodernist 
I think you’re right. Looking particularly at the medical complex, I can’t help but think that most of the doctors giving tacit approval and recommending the wretched vaxx are not stupid, but afraid to go against the grain. Just as most people are now cowed into silence on things that are obviously true (normal, real marriage was upheld at the ballot box in California of all places!), I think so too the doctors fear repercussions if they don’t toe the line (after all, they’re swimming in debt these days from all that schooling, better somebody else lose his job than me, right?)
But I think we are seeing a slow shift in how people are taking these things. I work for a company larger than 100 in size, and I for one (and probably about half my coworkers) would rather be fired with no idea where the next paycheck will come from than submit to this insane tyranny and roll the dice with the clot shot. Putting people out of work and trying to unperson them is intended to make them submit so they can come back into society, hat in hand, groveling for the opportunity to keep grillin and chillin. I think the powers that be underestimate the anger they are stoking.
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I see a slow shift, too, for which I’m very thankful. The large company I work for imposed the vaccine mandate and I refused. Managed to get an exemption but I was clear I’d be out the door without it, despite not being ready financially to leave.
And I learned I wasn’t alone, even in my own local part of the company. It’s good to see. The pot is going to boil at some point.
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