There was a time when Republicans at least pretended to have spines. When cowardice was a private shame, not a public platform. When decency was a minimum standard, not a punchline.
That time is gone.
What stands before us now is not a political party but a mausoleum of moral collapse. A taxidermy display of what courage used to look like. A wax museum of trembling opportunists practicing their solemn faces in the mirror before selling what remains of their souls for access, airtime, or absolution.
They do not govern. They grovel.
They do not serve. They submit.
They perform piety while pocketing hush money and quote scripture while bowing to a man who treats the Bible like a photo prop and the presidency like a casino license.
They are courtiers in a collapsing court, polishing the brass on a sinking yacht and calling it leadership. They mistake cowardice for strategy, obedience for faith, and corruption for competence. They are the spiritual heirs of every coward who stood silently by while something sacred was destroyed.
And they have the gall to call it patriotism.
Because every time decency begged them to act, they flinched. Every time democracy called for defenders, they found microphones instead. Every time truth reached for daylight, they built another wall of lies.
When he bragged about sexual assault, they called it locker room talk.
When he called Mexicans rapists, they called it unconventional.
When he rolled out the red carpet for Putin, they called it diplomacy.
When he golfed and shrugged while thousands of Americans were dying each day, they said it was taken out of context.
When the FBI found boxes of classified documents in his bathroom, they called it a hoax.
When he was convicted on thirty-four felony counts, they called it a sham.
When he incited an attack on our Capitol, they called it peaceful.
And when that stopped working, they called it the deep state.
Because when it comes to Trump, cowardice is not the symptom. It is the system.
They did not see it. They did not hear it. They did not read it. They did not know it. They cannot say it. They will not say it. They do not remember it. They will not repeat it.
They excuse, deflect, deny, distort, distract, diminish, and disappear. A conga line of complicity wrapped in cowardice, moving to the beat of moral collapse.
They are terrified of him. Terrified to speak, terrified to blink, terrified to stand upright in the same century as the truth.
A congregation of cowards. A gallery of gutless yes-men and hollow-eyed grifters who confuse their trembling silence for strategy.
They have no courage, no conscience, no conviction. Only the quivering instinct of survival that makes jellyfish look decisive.
They are not leaders. They are lab rats in his moral maze, trained to flinch at the sound of honesty.
They have surrendered their tongues, their spines, and their souls. They have traded integrity for immunity, valor for vanity, and public service for self-preservation.
Call them what they are.
Spineless. Craven. Pusillanimous. Timid. Trembling. Toadying. Toothless. Bootlicking. Backboneless. Sycophantic. Subservient. Servile. Sniveling. Scared.
They are a thousand synonyms for coward. They are the thesaurus entry for shame.
He humiliates them in public, and they applaud. He mocks their faith, and they pass the collection plate. He breaks the law, and they break into song. He sells them out, and they sell tickets to the next rally.
They are not a party. They are an open-air moral collapse with catering. A living monument to how easily power seduces the weak.
And the tragedy is that their cowardice does not just belong to them. It costs us all. Because every time they lower the bar for him, they lower it for the country. Every time they move the line to protect his corruption, they erase the one that protected our democracy.
So now we live in the wreckage. A place where shame no longer exists. Where corruption is currency. Where cowardice is career advancement. Where cruelty is the new credential.
They are not ashamed. They are proud. They wear their depravity like a badge. They campaign on it. They televise it. They raise money off it.
And that is how the line died.
He did not kill it alone. They helped him bury it. With every lie they repeated, every sin they excused, every silence they sold, they shoveled the dirt until there was nothing left to defend but their own reflection.
And someday, when history drags their names into the light, they will be remembered for what they were. Not for what they claimed to stand for, but for what they surrendered to stay standing.
Because the line is gone.
And they moved it.
And they will swear they did not.
And the rest of us will know they did.
And when history calls for justice and the record demands truth, we will be the ones to redraw every line they erased. Every moral line, every legal line, every human one.
We are the line now.
And good fucking luck getting us to move.
