ESSAY: Home of the brave? Really?

Who will stand up for democracy?

Only in the song does the one automatically follow the other. In real life, you don’t get to be “the land of the free” if you are not also “the home of the brave.”

As I write this, there are scattered and inspiring examples of bravery all around us — prosecutors, judges, even the occasional lawmaker. But in the main, we are proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are not the home of the brave. We are a country full of people smilingly capitulating to a tyrant.

Here in this city is a mayor who just went ahead and said it: “I’m collaborating.” A word more well chosen than he knew.

Collaborating. Yes, collaborating. That is exactly what he was doing. When he all but invited Donald Trump’s immigration raids into this city forged of the world in exchange for his own narrow freedom.

Collaborating. Exactly that. It is fashionable now. Bravery, less so.

It’s the media owners who are rejecting advertisements from the pro-democracy movement and letting go of cartoonists who challenge power and settling bogus lawsuits to protect their wider commercial interests, and trying to position themselves in the Dear Leader’s good graces. Why do they even own newspapers? Maybe they would be better off owning banks. Do they know what newspapers are for?

Collaborating.

It is the astonishing number of Democratic legislators and leaders who have no lack of courage when asking you for $5 via text message, but who ghost harder than single men in their 20s when the time comes for us to reap our investment in them. They say some big things, but they refuse to put a blanket hold on nominees or otherwise shut down the business of government until the coup that is plainly occurring is stopped. Turns out you should always get your spinal surgery before an authoritarian takeover.

Collaborating.

Then there are the CEOs, who, five years ago, proudly positioned themselves as avatars of a new future of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and now purge those programs from their own companies. They have more power with the resources at their command than most people who have ever lived, but it is not enough to give them courage. They would sell out their own colleagues, make them feel less part of the team, in order to please a Dear Leader who would sell them out in a Wall Street second.

Collaborating.

It’s the liberal and progressive nonprofits and foundations that we learn are pulling back from supporting the vital work of organizing for democracy, at kind of the exact moment when you would want to be organizing for democracy. They have chosen the wrong time to collapse. In the good times, they boast to the world of their missions to advance justice and freedom and equality. And then when an actual fascist takes the American presidency, suddenly they’re pulling back, they’re protecting their assets, they’re going safe.

Collaborating.

It is the university leaders who, instead of defending their faculty — one of the only bastions of protected thinkers who can actually tell the truth without fear because of tenure — are bending over backwards to please the wannabe autocrat. Campuses are now full of fear of a new McCarthyism. How does it feel to work for leaders who do not have your back?

Collaborating.

We are learning about ourselves as a country. We are learning who among us and around us is brave. Apparently, you don’t even need all of your fingers and toes.

Maybe it was always a mistake to count on these big institutions to protect us. They haven’t been for some time now. Yes, there are a handful of brave lawmakers, brave judges, brave media voices, brave others. But in general, it is now very clear after this first month that no one is coming to save us.

It’s time to take back our country. Not only from this authoritarian nightmare, but also from the collaborators too insipid and weak and chickenshit — too skinless and boneless — to stand up for us.

It is becoming time to be the home of the brave, if we wish to be the land of the free.

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