National Chickenshit Day

There is nothing more spiritually offensive than chickenshit. On God’s green earth, it might just be the least green thing we’ve got. If a person is weak, feckless, and morally gelatinous: he’s chickenshit. If a rule is so asinine that Kafka himself would ask, “Really?”: it’s chickenshit. If a political columnist spends his career trying to impress people who would rather be caught dead than caught agreeing with him: he’s David Brooks, and yes, he’s chickenshit.

The term first entered our national vocabulary around 1947, just in time for the Cold War and your grandfather’s ulcer. It began life as a noun meaning “a contemptible cowardly person.” The following year, it evolved into an adjective—because chickenshit couldn’t be content with just being a thing. It had to describe things, too.

It was a hit with U.S. soldiers during World War II because it perfectly described the Pentagon’s uniquely American brand of red tape. Chickenshit regulations weren’t just annoying, they were laughably petty–bureaucracy so trivial, so soul-crushingly stupid, it made bullshit look noble by comparison. Bullshit at least has heft. Chickenshit is what happens when authority gets drunk on its own impotence.

Even Amazon—retailer of all things—couldn’t escape the stink. During the pandemic, the company terminated employees for having the gall to raise concerns about worker conditions. One VP called it “chickenshit” and quit in protest, thereby instantly becoming the only VP in Amazon history to exhibit a functioning spine.

But chickenshit isn’t all workplace repression and Beltway cowardice. No, in the great American tradition of alchemy, we’ve turned even this most contemptible of concepts into entertainment.

Enter Chickenshit, the card game. A drinking (optional) social game designed to be played in public. The premise? You draw a card. It dares you to do something mildly outrageous with a stranger. If you fail, you drink. If you succeed, you earn points and possibly a court summons. “Going out will never be the same again,” chirps the packaging, oblivious to the fact that public shenanigans for cheap thrills is not a new idea—it’s just TikTok with printed instructions.

The game features one hundred “beautifully designed” cards and one hundred legally disavowed consequences. A disclaimer informs you that by purchasing the game, you release the creators from everything. Which, fittingly, is the most chickenshit legal move imaginable.

Still, the game gets one thing right: We are all chickenshit now. We drink not because we’re brave, but because it helps us forget how often we fold. We laugh at cards because real risk terrifies us. We rail against petty rules—unless they benefit us, in which case, we enforce them with zeal. Even Chicken Little, who at least had conviction, wouldn’t survive a day in this spineless landscape. He’d get pecked to death by HR.

Lyndon Johnson once said, “I may not know much, but I do know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad.” Today, we seem to have lost the recipe entirely. What passes for courage now is just flavorless conformity served on a bed of shredded fear.

And so we draw our cards. And drink. And dare. And chicken out.

Because if there’s one thing this culture truly excels at, it’s being boldly, proudly, unapologetically … chickenshit.