The Myth of Cancel Culture
It’s not cancel culture when you decide to quit smoking cigarettes. When a newly diagnosed diabetic cuts out sugar it’s not cancel culture. When a drug addict decides to seek treatment or a alcoholic puts down the bottle and swears off the sauce it’s not cancel culture. It’s prudent. It’s reasonable. It’s wise. It’s not the product of a misguided cultural incentive.
The very concept is itself an attempt to brand something that’s often warranted and argubly nessessary as excessive, even dystopian. Yet history does not recall the storming of Normandy or the battle of Okinawa as cancel culture. It doesn't decry either the Emacipation of slaves or the Declaration of Independence as cancel culture even though it meets the subjective definition by those who claim to be it’s victims. This is key to understanding why such a sudden and ridiculous assertion is becoming a common place cry in modern discourse.
When anyone, be it a wayward soul or body politic, decides to alter a course from a destructive and toxic behavior they are not engaged in and driven my a cultural narrative forced upon them by misguided external forces acting in their own self interest. What they are doing is what they must do to alter a trajectory whose outcome is both predictable and avoidable. No one blames them for this. They however do get blamed for not taking the steps needed to change the obvious outcome.
Yet that is what people are expected to believe when cries of cancel culture arise from those whose actions are clearly warranting of action meant to protect from and address an obvious flaw in the logic of thought. That somehow blatantly selfish and self interested unmitigated ambition lead people to push narratives both toxic and destructive are to be tolerated and those who do not are subject to a culture that denies freedom of thought and expression. Such arguments are so absurd as to be laughable and we rightly should laugh at them. Because what they are determined to do is recast values closely held and dearly won at the cost of blood and treasure as obstacles to be overcome and ignored in the pursuit of toxic ambition and unrestrained greed.
Cancel culture isn't a phenomena, it’s a brand. A hamfisted defense of an indefensible illogical and clearly immoral position. People who act and think and talk like fascists want to not be treated like the fascists they act like then the answer to this self imposed dilema is simple, they shouldn’t act like and talk and think like fascists. They shouldn’t do is pretend to hide behind a fake brand of existential judgement cast upon them by a society that doesn’t understand them and therefore has no right ot cast them into the oblivion of irrelevance.
To blame a culture for rejecting wholesale the actions of an immoral behavior but not changing the behavior itself is simply a way to externalize and pretend to be removed from the thing with which they are fully engaged. It is not only right and proper to repudiate this behavior it is arguably the only reasonable necessary action to take. This isn’t a culture of cancellation, it’s the only logical thing to do.
We don't call it cancel culture when roman Senators surrounded Julius Ceaser. It’s not thought of as cancel culture when protestants broke from a thousand years of rule or when Martin Luther began placing his letters on doors. It’s not considered cancel culture when colonies seek independence from the rule of distant powers. It’s not considered cancel culture when a society under the yoke of dictatorship burns for the taste of freedom. That’s because cancel culture is a myth. It doesn’t exist.
To qualify this there are of course times when ostracization and censorship are means to an end which denies people freedom. Which seeks to contrain thought and expression and consolidate power into a silo for the will and desire of a select few, even a select one. History is full of stories of Kings and rulers who have bent the collective will of their societies to this end and used these tools. However often this may happen there is a distinction which arises between obvious acts of opression and a wanton disregard for the truth and facts. It is the latter which can happen in a free society, it’s purposes vary but it’s goals are remarkably consistent. To obfuscate, to diminish intent and shift responsibility away from individuals and onto the society at large even though what they say or what they want are counter to the goals of a free an open society.
Cancel culture therefore has the common denomiator of being subjectively applied. Rather than an obvious error which can be pointed to and corrected it is the branding of correcting an obvious error or toxic action as flawed, even judgmental. Arguably it is judgemental but that doesn't render it unwarranted. Much like when a drunk sleeps it off at a friends instead of climbing behind the wheel and risking the lives of every person on the roads between where they are and where they live isn’t cancel culture, it’s just the right thing to do. The right choice to make. It’s so obviously the right thing to do it practically goes without saying and it certainly doesn’t get branded as a cultural interpretation foisted upon the individual in question bent on curtailing the freedoms and choices of the individual. In such a scenario choices are themselves a myth. If you can’t call an Uber or a catch a ride with a friend there are no choices, you just enjoy the couch.
When a husband decides not to cheat on his wife the mistress isn’t a victim of cancel culture. When an abusive parent decides to not take out their anger on their kids the children are not victims of cancel culture. When people in power push outright lies in the interest of self serving greed and are rejected by the society they ostensibly serve they are not victims of cancel culture. It is simply the right thing to do.