Someone called me a menace the other day. My response? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Better a menace than a coward.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The comment came under a video where I talked about the inner strength that comes from refusing to lie, bend, or back down in the face of fear. You have to appreciate the irony of being called a threat for upholding time-tested values like honesty, fairness, and courage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A menace is someone who threatens to cause harm, but historically the label has been used to describe anyone disruptive, dangerous, or unsettling to the status quo. Many “menaces” throughout history were simply people who refused to be silent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the word they hurled at Socrates, Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Edward Snowden. Leah Remini, Mike Rinder, and Robert Vaughn Young were smeared the same way when they spoke out against Scientology. And some of you remember being accused of it for refusing to jeopardize your health\u2014or your family\u2019s\u2014during the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The scale isn’t what matters. The real menace is to illusions. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n And wherever you find \u201cmenaces,\u201d you\u2019ll find cowards: people who take the path of silence, complicity, and avoidance in the face of real harm. The mother who takes a sleeping pill so she doesn\u2019t hear her husband slip into their daughter\u2019s bedroom. The local leader who won\u2019t confront a predator because \u201cit\u2019s a busy weekend.\u201d Peter disowning Jesus after his arrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They don\u2019t commit the evil directly. On the surface they look polite, reasonable, safe. And they\u2019ll even join in when it\u2019s convenient\u2014but that\u2019s the key. They\u2019ll join in.<\/em> Until there\u2019s a critical mass of consensus to hide behind, they won\u2019t lift a finger to prevent harm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And they will join a mob to attack the people who do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And so you have to ask: Which really does more harm to the world? The so-called menace<\/em>, or the coward?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Inside OTO, I was once described as \u201cthe future of the Order\u201d and \u201cpossibly the best master\u201d my community would ever have. I was praised for honesty, fairness, and courage\u2014until I stopped playing the game. The same traits that made me a hero on Monday made me a menace on Tuesday. What changed? Not me. Just my refusal to stay silent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s the pattern: as long as your strength serves the status quo, you\u2019re celebrated. The moment it threatens illusions, you\u2019re branded a menace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the next time someone makes you feel like speaking the truth makes you a menace? Smile<\/em>. Because the alternative is cowardice. And the world has more than enough of that already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Better a menace than a coward.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Someone called me a menace the other day. My response? Better a menace than a coward. The comment came under a video where I talked about the inner strength that comes from refusing to lie, bend, or back down in the face of fear. You have to appreciate the irony of being called a threat…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2227,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[466,435,499,504,503,273,501,502,492,500,432],"class_list":["post-2223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-character","tag-courage","tag-cowardice","tag-fairness","tag-honesty","tag-illusion","tag-mob-rule","tag-power","tag-sovereignty","tag-strength","tag-virtue"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/menace-banner.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2223"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2229,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223\/revisions\/2229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}