Cancel culture.
Democrats have a structural problem: asymmetrical virtues.
Republicans are the party of individual rights.
Democrats are the party of social responsibility.
Both political parties consider themselves virtuous, but the present moment makes it an easy lift for Republicans and a difficult one for Democrats. Republicans make a virtue out of doing what you want to do: This is America, land of the free. Democrats say to love-your-neighbor, and to make it work, we require it.
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| Hypocrisy! |
Being opposed to abortion is easy. Most people who oppose it don't themselves need one. And if a young daughter off to study at Bible College gets pregnant, she can slip off, visit the Planned Parenthood office, take a now-legal abortion pill, have a heavy period, and the parents are never the wiser. Republican officeholders can signal additional virtue by including an element of slut-shaming (she should have been more careful) and racial dog-whistling (look what Blacks are doing to themselves) inside their condemnation of abortion.
Freedom. The right to abortion is an anomaly for Republicans because it is a restriction. Most Republican policies are freedoms to do what one wants--a bedrock American value. Live free. You are free to love your neighbor--but you are under no obligation to do it. Republicans advocate freedom from high taxes to support the government, freedom from regulations that attempt to protect the environment, freedom from burdensome COVID restrictions, freedom from policies to redress the effects of past and current racial and gender discrimination, freedom to own and carry guns.
Democrats chose a harder path. Except for abortion, on most of the contentious issues facing the country, Democratic policies bend in one direction. They require less selfish and more restrictive behavior. They cost money and limit freedom to support the common good as Democrats define it.
Democrats have a hypocrisy problem. Except in the rare cases where anti-abortion Republican officeholders have been busted for having or urging an abortion, it is easy to avoid being caught out for hypocrisy. After all, if your brand is freedom, then doing what you want is on-brand. Democrats, though, need consistently to practice what they preach, or they give excuse to opponents to cry foul. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was photographed maskless getting her hair done. California Governor Newsom was maskless at a restaurant. Environmental leader John Kerry took a private jet to be at an environmental conference. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez now gets a House Members' salary and isn't poor. The conservative media points to this to document inconstancy and fuel the populist theme of the contempt and high-handedness of liberal elites.
The left, sensitive to the charge of hypocrisy, created a self-inflicted wound in the opposite direction. Within academia and the media, any breach of decorum regarding race and gender, even at the newest edges of the evolving rules, requires immediate condemnation and an occupational death sentence.
This created the worst of situations for Democrats. They are called out for hypocrisy, and then called out for hyper-vigilance over hypocrisy, the so-called "cancel culture." The New York Times just fired a reporter of 45-years tenure because he used the n-word in staff discussion, quoting a word used by another person. It was agreed by everyone, including the staff members who said they were deeply offended and outraged, that he did not use the word. He mentioned the word saying the word itself is a troubling word to use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use–mention_distinction. That was an occupational capital crime. Not only did the NY Times proudly fire him, the reporter also agreed, saying he took full responsibility for his grave error. "Originally, I thought the context in which I used this ugly word could be defended. I now realize that it cannot. It is deeply offensive and hurtful.” Click: NY Times
Asymmetry. We are in a strange situation where the political right can excuse anything, the political left can excuse nothing. Republicans observed President Trump say he would not accept the results of an election if he lost it, and then openly attempted to stay in office by whipping up a mob to stop Congress from carrying out its duty. Most Republican officeholders conclude that this is less than ideal, perhaps, but certainly not anything that deserves consequences. Simultaneously, the left is joyfully firing people for describing accurately the objectionable words used by others in a discussion of objectionable words.
If Democrats lose big in the 2022 and 2024 elections, cancel culture will be part of the reason why. The left puts everyone at risk. Americans will more happily face the risks of tyranny by an autocrat arguing for more freedom than the risks of tyranny by the left calling out behaviors of which people think they themselves might now or in the past have been guilty.
7 comments:
I might have something to say, but I’m afraid that I would be ostracized for my beliefs.
Ethnic slurs are racist. If we can agree on that then all we need to consider are the consequences.
Lying is immoral. If we can agree on that then all we need to consider are the consequences.
If Progressives set themselves to a higher standard ie., don't lie and don't be racist, then we will be fine.
"Cancel culture" is a made-up Regressive trope designed to disparage people who tell the truth about liars and racists. Another is "elites".
The Regressive use of choice as a moral condemnation is hypocrisy in full display. Our best legal and moral minds have agonized over this issue and have determined the best, not perfect, course for our society. No one denies it's an emotional issue, but smart people know that we can not live together in peace if we allow emotions to rule.
January 6, 2021...
Cancel culture is real.
Here is an excerpt from John McWhorter‘s new book, with descriptions of the instances of cancel culture. It seems to me that we are currently in a new version of the Salem witch trials, or McCarthyism, or the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Dangerous and completely unjust things are happening.
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As I write this in the summer of 2020, Alison Roman, a food writer for The New York Times, is on suspension. You might wonder just what a food writer could do to end up temporarily dismissed by her employer. Roman’s sin: in an interview she passingly criticized two people for commercialism, model and food writer Chrissy Teigen and lifestyle coach Marie Kondo. Roman was Twitter-mobbed for having the nerve, as a white woman, to criticize two women of color.
Teigen is half white and half Thai. Kondo is a Japanese citizen. Neither of them are what we typically think of as people “of color” in the sense of historically conditioned and structurally preserved disadvantage. However, in 2020, the mere fact of a white person criticizing not just one but two (apparently the plurality tipped the scales) non-white persons justified being shamed on social media and disallowed from doing her work. Roman, as a white person, was supposedly punching down – i.e. “down” at two people very wealthy, very successful, and vastly better known than her. Her whiteness trumped all, we were told.
Roman, now typically of such cases, ate crow with an apologetic statement about how she had reflected and realized her error. Teigen even stated that she did not think Roman deserved to be sanctioned. But no matter – Third Wave Antiracist fury now has a supreme power in our public moral evaluations, and this meant that Roman be pilloried in the town square. Her Wikipedia entry will forever include a notice that she was deemed a racist, billboard style, despite that most Americans likely see that she did nothing that remotely deserved such treatment, and despite that she would not have been treated that way as recently as a few years before.
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The same year, Leslie Neal-Boylan lasted only a few months as Dean of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. The problem was that in the wake of statements nationwide after the murder by police officers of George Floyd, Dean Neal-Boylan had the audacity to pen this blinkered, bigoted screed to her colleagues and staff:
I am writing to express my concern and condemnation of the recent (and past) acts of violence against people of color. Recent events recall a tragic history of racism and bias that continue to thrive in this country. I despair for our future as a nation if we do not stand up against violence against anyone. BLACK LIVES MATTER, but also, EVERYONE’S LIFE MATTERS. No one should have to live in fear that they will be targeted for how they look or what they believe.”
A certain crowd decided to read Neal-Boylan as chiming in with those who resist the slogan Black Lives Matter by answering that All Lives Matter, as if BLM is somehow claiming that Black Lives Matter more. However, one could only read Neal-Boylan as meaning this via not reading well. She started out by acknowledging “a tragic history of racism and bias,” and no, she didn’t mean that it only existed in the past and that black people need to get over it, because she also wrote that the racism and bias “continue to thrive in this country.”
However, because her composition included the three words “everyone’s lives matter,” she was reported to her superiors and quickly out of a job without even being allowed to defend herself. Why was Leslie Neal-Boylan’s email deemed as a missive from someone unfit to supervise people dedicated to healing and giving comfort? A child would wonder why – as would a time traveller from as recently as 2015. But Neal-Boylan’s detractors were deemed authoritative.
And one more:
Also in the same year, 2020, a data analyst at a progressive consulting firm named David Shor lost his job. He had tweeted a study by a black Ivy League political science professor, Omar Wasow, showing that violent black protests during the long, hot summers of the late 1960s were more likely than nonviolent ones to make local voters vote Republican. Shor’s intent was not to praise this, but to disseminate the facts themselves as a glum announcement, which had been covered eagerly by liberal media shortly beforehand.
Certain parties on Twitter, though, didn’t like a white man tweeting something that could be taken as criticizing black protest in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. The consulting firm took heed and expelled Shor.
What kind of people did this? Why did they get away with it? And are we going to let them continue to?
Ironic that the Gates Foundation motto is "ALL LIVES HAVE EQUAL VALUE," which until these moments seemed deeply apt, in that Gates rigorously aims to maximize the saving of human lives, mainly by applying a vast fortune to address the most common serious diseases that still plague the developing world. Seems like the Gates motto, taken out of context, or placed in direct contrast to BLM, would seem problematical. Of course, it is not. What is problematical is the failure to many people to appreciate exactly what BLM means, because it is obvious.
Very thoughtful/disturbing discussion everyone.
It would be interesting to hear what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have thought of this discussion. He was a student (both Morehouse and Boston University) of a philosophical and theological school of thought called "Personalism". It was the basis of his doctoral thesis. Essentially it was that EVERYONE is made in the image of God, which is why every human is sacred and worthy of dignity and respect. This meant that people of color should not accept being treated less than anyone else. It also meant that even if they were mistreated, they should not harm their oppressors, because their oppressors too were intrinsically sacred. You'll notice in King's speeches/sermons he never demonized his oppressors - just the oppression. This was the foundation of "non-violence" and it worked for that time because of their religious beliefs in, and accountability to, a higher moral order (i.e. God).
I know Rick and Mike (and others) may disagree, but I submit that lack of MLK's kind of common moral compass has made it so anyone can claim a moral high ground - and as we see - shame and denigrate (cancel) anyone with whom they disagree with smug, self-righteous impunity.
Fascinating! So much to think about.
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