Profiles in Cowardice

Part I: Introduction

I’ve spent the week writing an essay that turned out to be monstrously long and complex.

It began because I was dismayed to hear, on a podcast, that the biggest medical associations United States are declining to oppose RFK Jr.’s most insane ideas and pronouncements about vaccines, reportedly because they fear retaliation from the Trump administration. I confirmed that this was so, then began thinking how craven and timorous the American elite has proven itself, and the strange disappearance of a taboo: I’m pretty sure there was once a widespread reluctance to be viewed by one’s peers as a sniveling coward.

Then I began asking myself, “Why exactly do so many people now think it’s socially acceptable to behave like a coward?”

Two things about Trump’s second term have genuinely surprised me. Had I been asked, I would have predicted something quite different. The first has been the speed of it. I’d assumed we would follow in the footsteps of Hungary or Turkey, meaning that by the end of Tr…