The Coward’s Bargain
Someone our family has known forever recently told my sister that they’ve been reading my Substack and that if they wrote the things I write, people would call them crazy. I got a kick out of that—not because it’s untrue, but because it reveals something darker about where we’ve ended up as a society. Most people are terrified of being themselves in public.
My sister’s response made me laugh: “People do call him crazy. He simply doesn’t care.” The funniest part is that I don’t even write the craziest stuff I research—just the stuff I can back up with sources and/or my own personal observations. I always try to stay rooted in logic, reason, and facts, though—I’m clear when I’m speculating and when I’m not.
This same guy has sent me dozens of private messages over the last 4 or 5 years challenging me on stuff I share online. I’ll respond with source material or common sense, and then—crickets. He disappears. If I say something he doesn’t want to hear, he vanishes like a child covering his ears. Over the last few years, I’ve been proven right about most of what we’ve argued about, and he’s been wrong. But it doesn’t matter—he’s got the memory of a gnat and the pattern never changes.
But he’d never make that challenge publicly, never risk being seen engaging with my arguments where others might witness the conversation. This kind of private curiosity paired with public silence is everywhere—people will engage with dangerous ideas in private but never risk being associated with them publicly. It’s part of that reflexive “That can’t be true” mindset that shuts down inquiry before it can even begin.
But he’s not alone. We’ve created a culture where wrongthink is policed so aggressively that even successful, powerful people whisper their doubts like they’re confessing crimes.
I was on a hike last year with a very prominent tech VC. He was telling me about his son’s football team—how their practices kept getting disrupted because their usual field on Randall’s Island was now being used to house migrants. He leaned in, almost whispering: “You know, I’m a liberal, but maybe the people complaining about immigration have a point.” Here’s a guy who invests mountains of money into companies that shape the world we live in, and he’s afraid to voice a mild concern about policy in broad daylight. Afraid of his own thoughts.
After I spoke out against vaccine mandates, a coworker told me he totally agreed with my position—but he was angry that I’d said it. When the company didn’t want to take a stand, I told them I would speak as an individual—on my own time, as a private citizen. He was pissed anyway. In fact, he was scolding me about the repercussions to the company. What’s maddening is that this same person had enthusiastically supported the business taking public stands on other, more politically fashionable causes over the years. Apparently, using your corporate voice was noble when it was fashionable. Speaking as a private citizen became dangerous when it wasn’t.
Another person told me that they agreed with me but wished they were “more successful like me” so they could afford to speak out. They had “too much to lose.” The preposterousness of this is staggering. Everyone who spoke out during Covid sacrificed—financially, reputationally, socially. I sacrificed plenty myself.
This is the adult world we’ve built—one where courage is so rare that people mistake it for privilege, where speaking your mind is seen as a luxury only the privileged can afford, rather than a fundamental requirement for actually becoming established.
And this is the world we’re handing to our children.
This is how totalitarian thinking takes root—not through jackbooted thugs, but through a million small acts of self-censorship. When a venture capitalist whispers his concerns about immigration policy like he’s confessing to a thought crime. When successful professionals agree with dissenting views privately but would never defend them publicly. When speaking obvious truths becomes an act of courage rather than basic citizenship.
George Orwell understood this perfectly. In 1984, the Party’s greatest achievement wasn’t forcing people to say things they didn’t believe—it was making them afraid to believe things they weren’t supposed to say. “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake,” O’Brien explains to Winston. “We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.” But the real genius was making citizens complicit in their own oppression, turning everyone into both prisoner and guard.
History shows us how this works in practice. The Stasi in East Germany didn’t just rely on secret police—they turned ordinary citizens into informants. By some estimates, one in seven East Germans was reporting on their neighbors, friends, even family members. The state didn’t need to watch everyone; they got people to watch each other. But the Stasi had limitations: they could recruit informants, but they couldn’t monitor everyone simultaneously, and they couldn’t instantly broadcast transgressions to entire communities for real-time judgment.
Social media solved both problems. Now we have total surveillance capability—every comment, photo, like, and share automatically recorded and searchable.
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