Here is my position: it obviously takes balls to run into enemy fire, and face death. But you are running with a lot of other people. You are doing EXACTLY what you were trained to do, what you were brainwashed to do, to do reflexively without thinking about it. You are conforming to the behavior of everyone around you. Particularly given your training, it is in many respects easier to do what is expected, than what would otherwise be natural.
When you are taking an unpopular position, you are not, in most cases, in danger of death. No blood will flow. No letters will be written to next of kin. This is all to the good.
But you will be hated. You will be attacked verbally and often implicitly threatened physically. You are doing the opposite of what your cohort otherwise would have wanted you to do. You are swimming against the current. You have no companions. No one has your back. You must fear people swarming around you in open contempt.
This is not death. This is an important point. BUT, I think many people would sooner face physical death than censure by those around them.
I think most people would sooner face bullets with their friends, than hard decisions, alone, on contentious topics.
This is, to take a Spockian perspective, illogical. One case may kill you. The other may merely embarrass you. But I feel strongly, based on long term personal observation, that this is the case.
People very simply do not want to be the only ones saying something. They do not want to feel that solitude. They do not want to endure that neglect and ire.
My fear is slowly falling away. This means I give less and less fucks every day. If people want to be willfully ignorant imbeciles, with a nod to Yogi Berra, nobody is going to stop them.