“Ozymandias”
Let it be said that we were not mere spectators to the breaking, But the ones who stood to hold the scale.
Feb 21, 2026
I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—
“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, tell that its sculptor well those passions read which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things. The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; and on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.
This evening, I read a text written by a 30-year-old friend. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.
What struck me wasn’t just his list of grievances, but his perspective: he was already imagining how this era will be judged after he is gone. There is something profoundly sobering about a young man in the prime of his life already picturing the historical autopsy of his own lifetime.
He wrote:
“Someday, there’s going to be fascinating historical writing about the total lack of consequence for malfeasance in American sociopolitics and finance throughout my generation. As long as the ship kept sailing—mostly for the ‘right’ people—those in authority collectively decided nobody ever had to be accountable for anything they did. No accountability for lying our country into the Iraq war. No accountability for the mortgage crisis. No accountability for private equity destroying everything they touch. No accountability for one of the worst COVID-19 responses on Earth. No accountability for an attempted insurrection. Now we’ve reached ‘no accountability’ for violence caught on camera or for those abetting child abusers. It’s clearly unsustainable, and this escalating path has been horrific to watch.”
I am not sharing this to debate each individual example. I am sharing it because of what I hear underneath the words.
I hear a young man asking whether accountability still exists in any meaningful way. I hear frustration, yes, but more importantly, a deep hunger for justice.
It made me realize how different this moment is from other historical turning points. During World War II, many did not—could not—fully grasp the scope of atrocities until much later. Decisions were made in a fog of limited information. Today, we live in the opposite environment. We are saturated with information: repeated exposure, viral video, real-time analysis. We see the “sneer of cold command” in high definition.
Which leads to a question that feels anything but simple: Do we still want justice, fairness, and dignity to be foundational values?
I have spent my professional life trained to look for nuance and middle ground. That instinct remains. But there are moments when we have to ask whether certain principles are negotiable at all. Either they are foundational, or they are not.
What kind of country do we want a 30-year-old to live in for the next forty years? What standards are we willing to uphold? What are we willing to excuse?
I don’t know how much we can change one another through argument. In the end, this is an internal decision.
A moral one.
A personal one.
But collectively, those personal decisions dictate the direction of a society.
Years from now, when someone writes the history my friend imagines, I hope we can say we chose what we believed was right:
Years from now, when the ink is dry on the history my friend foretells
I hope we can say we did more than watch
I hope we can say we chose what we believed was right;
That justice was not a monument we left to crumble in the sand, but a fire we kept alive
With our own hands.
Let it be said that we were not mere spectators to the breaking,
But the ones who stood to hold the scale.