I think these things should all be universally true:
1. Freely flowing thoughts and ideas are a good thing. Free speech should be embraced and promoted, not just from infringement by the government, but in all spheres. However, it's not without limits.
2. Hate speech and bigotry are a bad thing, that should be criticized and "cancelled". However, we can have grace and forgiveness, as well, when appropriate.
3. Not all speech that somebody deems "offensive" should be shut down. People need to weigh context, reasonability, and intent.
This. When I call for a return to common sense sanity, this is precisely what I am calling for.
People are increasingly sick of the dark triad types who engage in item three to an extreme extent so they can boost their “woke credentials.” These sick individuals love seeing people they merely disagree with being cancelled/shunned, even though they know some of these people are good people who do not deserve to be lumped in with item two (they see the world differently, but are not hateful bigots by any means). This type of cancel culture behavior, jumping on people for retweeting an off-color joke about women for example, often resembles the brimstone biblical types of the 20th century with God/Jesus substituted with “social justice” and “equity.” The backlash against these types—among right-wingers, middle/center folk, and classical liberals who worship item one above all else—the backlash is obviously bubbling to the surface. Eventually we may need to treat the people who are seemingly always offended by something, always trying to push this cancellation or that ban, the same as the people who engage in item two above because ultimately what most of those people are really selling/pushing is hate/bigotry of a more implicit/insidious nature (or people are being pushed in that direction by those who want to see increasing levels of hate/bigotry/disunion). Many are not so different from the people who fall under item two, frankly.
I’ve read your last couple of posts as “Kanye was wrong, but cancel culture is to blame”.
This is an absolutely wild take.
Absolutely not the case. My point is that cancel culture has been so repulsive/over-the-top that we are now in an environment where one of the biggest musicians on the planet is spewing antisemitism and the nation is not 100% united in lambasting the sick dude with his evil comments. Complete opposite of how we would have reacted in 2012, 2002, 1992, etc., before cancel culture, when we were mostly united on categories 1-3 in Roy’s bullets above, and did not allow true hate/bigotry to be outside the shadows. To use my prior analogy of a law that treats bank robberies the exact same as murder with a life in prison sentence, cancel culture has snowballed and created an environment where the bank robbers are now running around saying, “what’s the difference if we take out everyone in the bank? If we’re caught, it’s life in prison no matter what, so time to do what we gotta do to walk out of here.” When we do not delineate between offensive/contrary viewpoints and dangerous/hateful/bigoted ideas, that is what we get.
It’s important to throw it in the face of the people who are “offended” at minor stuff like an off-color joke about women being different from men—the same types who find any disagreement “offensive” and something they try to censor because they’re sick, weak people themselves—the intolerance of these individuals, their intolerance of different viewpoints (and automatically trying to associate all disagreements with true hate/bigotry), and most people letting these offended people push their weight around in cancelling/trying to silence people for relatively minor transgressions compared to antisemitism, has contributed greatly to the current snowballing of problems.
Regarding Roy’s three bullet points, many people think trying to stifle bullet point one is perhaps the worst offense anybody can try to do regardless of where hate/bigotry is coming from—we can hold that opinion and still think the behaviors that fall into category two are repulsive and to be opposed/boycotted. But frankly, most are really sick of the people who fall into category 3, especially seeing something like this Kanye stuff blowup in the wake of everything. This would not be happening if not for the hordes who fall into category three (that is, people trying to shut down anything anybody says that anybody considers “offensive” - the backlash is the worst of the worst coming out to fight and further snowballing problems.
Far too many people need to learn all individuals are different/unique, and we will not always agree with everything everybody says, but simply being different does not mean someone is bigoted/hateful. We do not have a fundamental right to not be offended. That’s not how life works in a free country because a free country understands that anything and everything has the potential to offend. Yes, if someone spews hate/bigotry, shut ‘em down/cancel them. But being different from someone does not mean they’re hateful of someone or anybody for that matter. Being different, not towing a party line, does not mean they must be censored. Being hateful/bigoted means they must be censored. Try imposing censorship on people who are not hateful/bigoted and it definitely will not end well for anybody, especially those of us in the middle of these extreme leftists and extreme right-wingers. Cannot speak for everybody in the center, but most of us simply desire peace, prosperity and dignity for fellow members of our species. An increasing number of people in the middle are just fed up with both extremes, and want both sides to be powerless so we can once more have common sense sanity. It’s very sad that things have escalated so badly and out of hand that one of the biggest musicians on the planet is spewing antisemitism. If only we had reserved the act of ostracizing only for those who spew hate/bigotry like antisemitism, it seems likely we would not be such a mess today.
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