Where Have All the Brave Ones Gone?

By Loni Speaks

There was a time when courage wasn’t optional. When the world watched injustice unfold and ordinary people stood up, not because it was safe, but because it was right.

Our parents and grandparents understood that silence in the face of injustice was complicity. They marched against the Vietnam War when young men were being sent to die for lies. They faced dogs, batons, and tear gas in the Civil Rights Movement because dignity demanded it. They locked arms and sang “We Shall Overcome,” not knowing if they’d make it home, but believing freedom was worth the risk.

They didn’t have hashtags or viral posts. They had conviction. They had moral clarity. They had nerve.

And us? We whisper about injustice behind private accounts, afraid our employers might see. We self-censor in meetings, careful not to mention DEI, three letters that once symbolized progress but now trigger backlash. We worry more about whether we can shop at Target or say the wrong thing online than about the erosion of democracy happening in real time.

We are watching fascism, war, and genocide unfold before our eyes, streaming on our phones between coffee breaks, and somehow, we’ve grown numb. Our news outlets bow to power, our leaders trade integrity for polling numbers, and we, the people… scroll, shake our heads, and move on.

Meanwhile, a golden gilded throne is being built at the people’s house. National Guard troops patrol our city streets as if we’ve become the thing we once pitied, a frightened nation policed by fear and division. The rhetoric of hate has returned, cloaked in patriotism, cheered on by those who confuse cruelty with strength.

And while we argue over who belongs in which bathroom or who’s “too woke,” diseases once eradicated are creeping back into our schools. Measles, a virus our parents fought to eliminate, is reappearing because we’ve allowed conspiracy to triumph over science. The same society that mapped the human genome is now debating whether vaccines work.

We are literally turning back the clock, not just socially or politically, but medically. We’re calling autism something “curable” and blaming mothers for it, as if ignorance were insight and shame were medicine. We’ve forgotten that progress requires trust, in truth, in science, in one another. When did we start believing that expertise was elitism and that compassion was weakness?

This - this is - how civilizations fall, not with one great collapse, but through a thousand small surrenders of conscience. When good people become too busy, too cautious, or too afraid to speak, the moral spine of a nation weakens. And we, right now, are living in that fracture.

We’ve lost our nerve. Our courage. Our collective mojo.

We’ve become comfortable being uncomfortable. We’ve accepted fear as normal. We’ve learned to live with cowardice and call it “keeping the peace.”We’ve normalized sub-human behavior - from leaders, from media, from ourselves - and labeled it “strategy.”

But history is watching. And so are our children. The same way we look back at McCarthyism, at Jim Crow, at the silence during genocides past, they will one day ask, "What did you do when truth was under siege? When the soul of your nation trembled?When fear ruled the day?"

The Call to Courage

Maybe the brave ones aren’t gone at all. Maybe they’re simply quiet, like me, waiting for the noise of fear to fade enough for their courage to be heard again. Maybe they’re in each of us, buried beneath layers of doubt, convenience, and exhaustion.

Because bravery isn’t just about marching or protesting. It’s about choosing humanity when it’s easier to choose self. It’s about telling the truth when lies are more profitable. It’s about holding the line for decency, for reason, for love, even when the world calls you naïve for doing so.

The test of our time is not whether we can survive chaos, but whether we can still feel through it. Whether we can remember that our shared humanity is not a weakness to be exploited, but a strength to be lived. That moral courage is not found in headlines or hashtags, but in the quiet decision to act when the world looks away.

We are standing in a moment that will one day be history. And when that history is written, may it say that we remembered, that we chose to rise. That we remembered who we were before fear seduced us into silence. That we rebuilt our moral compass not out of nostalgia, but out of necessity.That we rediscovered the truth that has always been the heartbeat of the human spirit:

"We belong to one another. And when we forget that, we lose everything."

So maybe the brave ones never left. Maybe the brave ones are us, if only we dare to be.

#Courage · #Leadership · #Society · #Democracy · #Humanity · #MoralClarity · #LoniSpeaks

Loni Speaks, reminding us that leadership begins with courage.