I Think This Is Also Going To Blow Up

There are benefits to being a coward. And I don't mean just in the physical way, like I'd never join the military partially because of a general fear of mortality. That's a more complicated position than it seems, emotionally informed by an overwhelming and intrusive suspicion that the enemy would make an effort to specifically shoot at me. I would only imagine that the brave person (and this would have to be the wildest speculation on my part) is able to wade into The Fray with a certain amount of absurdly unjustifiable security in the opposite direction, that they're going to be fine. In a violent conflict, it seems like there's bravery and there's cowardice, but both are just different flavors of narcissism. I like mine better as it's the one that's in the plush recliner 11,000 miles away watching it on CNN when the cruise missiles hit.

On a more mundane, non-shooting level, the benefits of being a coward are more subtle. But I suppose just about everything carries a tiny bit more ambiguity at the volume of conflict where everyone's blood is expected to remain inside their bodies.

There's a fork along the coward's path. If we were left to decide this as adults on our own of course, no actual coward would ever have the capacity to extend themselves into something as onerous and treacherous as a choice. It would be a Y-junction marked by a growing pile of gibbering bodies, curled up atop and around one another, shaking and softly crying, paralyzed by indecision. No, fortunately the path is chosen for you well before your brain is developed enough to understand your own dearth of determinant utility. It's a complicated conditioning system, in place from pre-birth to about age 6, marked by parental neglect or abuse, peer rejection and/or possibly too much PBS, that at the end spits out one of two subsets of coward: The Bully or the De-escalator.

Obviously the Bully has a massive advantage in the short term, as most non-coward children foolishly let themselves be coddled into a false sense of safety by attentive and emotionally available parents. These precious lambs are left entirely unready for the onslaught of conflict The Bully thrives in manufacturing. There are limits to The Bully's success arc of course based on physical size and a whole raft of state and federal laws, so most bullies age out. Some can ride the wave a bit longer with luck, sometimes for life, sometimes all the way to being President of America.

The other path, the opposite path for coward children, is The De-escalator. Make everything OK. At whatever cost. I was about to say "even your dignity," but any and all practicing coward knows, that's the FIRST thing you throw at the feet of an aggressor. It's cheap, it's machine-washable and honestly you didn't have that much of it to begin with. And most conveniently, before you really start earning any money, that's what most conflict-ready people are looking to get off you anyway. Best to toss it off immediately, like a lizard sheds its tail, and run off at a surprising angle, but always AWAY.*

Unlike bullying, though, de-escalation is a transferrable skill that scales up nicely with age. The trigger-instinct to surrender, if you do it often enough, can be confused with, Being The Bigger Man. The phrase itself is high irony for a human attempting emotionally what dogs do physically when they tuck their tails between their legs, but it's a thing where, if the right person catches you at it at the right time in the right circumstances, you could accidentally find yourself praised for de-escalating. It will seem like a lack of ego, but you never, ever have to tell anyone how absolutely certain you are that it's because you suspect any level of non-agreement is going to end with you being hit in the face with a chair. No no, you go ahead and drink from the water fountain first, Janet, even though I was here ahead of you. I'll just stand here awkwardly and wait, with my nose defiantly not bleeding.

People like me make it to their mid-forties fairly well intact. Physically safe, financially not overstretched, emotionally cocooned, ideally with a non-coward who can talk to plumbers and car mechanics on your behalf.

The current period of super-hyper-partisanship in politics has been an interesting thing to negotiate if your first, third and ninetieth instinct is to Keep It All Level, Man. But it's all conflict all the time, on the news websites and TV. And it creeps into your house and dangerously close to your own name in the form of that one dipshit Trump Uncle on facebook or twitter or whatever.

And you can see, from your outside position, how conflict posture on a societal level is a cancer. It's not only uncomfortable and emotionally exhausting, it also increases the likelihood of outside bad actors leveraging one side against another with just the slightest nudge. All of American politics currently is wedge-shaped, ready for deployment against itself.

If you watch the bullies and the true believers rail on and on at each other in the impeachment hearings, it's clear that this should be the golden age for cowardly de-escalators like myself. We have lifetimes of experience "Being Willing to Listen" and "Hearing Both Sides" and "Being Nice To Your Wife's New Boyfriend." I've tried it. I've been listening. I'm hanging out on the sideline, waiting for my moment to puncture the tension.

But seriously, have you heard Devin Nunes speak? Or that Jim Jordan? Nah, fuck those guys. I'm willing to forego de-escalation in this case, that's how bad it's gotten. But notice I'm only over here saying it to, statistically speaking, zero people, anonymously on the internet. I'm happy to say my hypocrisy knows some bounds.

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*Serpentine. Naturally.