Here’s the 18-minute video. Description follows.
Description:
A lot of cowardice has lately been publicly displayed -- people caving because of intimidation, violating Tim Snyder's "Don't obey in advance" rule about dealing with tyrants.
- Newspaper owners squelching endorsements of Trump's opponents,
- Republican Senators falling into line,
- Scarborough and Brzezinski going down to Mar-A-Lago to kiss the ring,
- FBI Director Wray resigning rather than fighting,
- ABC paying to settle a bogus defamation suit, etc.
Are people less courageous than they used to be? (And if so, why would that be?)
Or, are we seeing a lack of moral courage that was ALWAYS there, except now we have a vengeful and powerful figure -- Donald Trump -- who makes visible what used to be latent but not seen?
And is there a factor here that there's been a moral deterioration, so that people have less commitment to values that go beyond their self-interest? So that they have less reason to be courageous, which means taking risks to serve those larger values-- which is what "heroes" are willing to do?
My guess is that it's both: Trump makes manifest that true courage is always rarer than we might want to believe; AND the deterioration of American moral culture enables the rise of a sociopathic approach to the world, draining away what would be a moral motivation to stand up to a tyrant, in defense of important values.
(Like with Wray: a man who was willing some years ago to sign off on a fake FBI "investigation" of the accusations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh would not be less likely to take risks to defend the Rule of Law and the integrity of the FBI against a would-be-dictator's abuse of power to remove him before his term is up in order to weaponize the FBI in service of the tyrant.)
Fortunately, we do also see examples of courage, like with Liz Cheney's resolute standing up for the Truth against Trump.