If you think about what is happening, the so-called cancel culture really amounts to social and cultural terrorism. It amounts to the demand that you comply with whatever their latest ludicrous idea is, or you will be attacked, punished, and to the extent possible destroyed.
This is terrorism. This is the mechanism of orthodox political terrorism.
And if you think about it, terrorism, itself, is really just an extension of the old mafia protection rackets, where goons would go door to door to businesses in their neighborhood, and tell them they needed to pay them a certain amount of money every month for “protection”. At varying times, in varying places, there may have been some actual value to this–especially in places where the cops maybe didn’t want to go, or where they were corrupt, making the mafia a de facto vigilante police force–but in most cases the REAL idea was that if you didn’t pay them, THEY would hurt you. You were paying from protection from your protectors.
And just as negotiating with terrorists breeds more terrorism, giving in to Cancel Culture breeds more of it. It empowers the lunatics, the fringe, the cringeworthy basement dwellers who live in swamps of hatred and vicarious violence. They are not up to ACTUAL violence, most of them, and the ones that are are not up to standing up to actual resistance, since they are pathetic bullies. But they are keyboard warriors, and very much up to the task of ruining people anonymously.
And in an actual civil war, if the shooting ever starts, I think many conservatives fail to understand the importance of the internet, and the fact that our opponents in general are much better at using and abusing it. Guns are a weapon of the last war.
Violence is always a last recourse. As I was telling one of my kids the other day, they CELEBRATED, at least in the South, when the Civil War broke out. They CELEBRATED, at least in Germany, when World War One broke out. The manly men among them were finally going to get the chance to kick those cowards asses.
Violence, once begun, is very hard to stop. Winfield Scott called the whole Civil War virtually from the beginning. He knew Richmond was a thousand miles or more from Washington.
There are signs that some of the hard heads are softening. Noam Chomsky, as one example, seems to see that some of his ideological children are Devil’s Spawn, and he does not want to go down in lockstep agreement with them.
We will see. This is an interesting time. I was reflecting the other day the wisdom of some teacher I read about who told his students to keep a diary of this time. Many years from now, our grandkids may want to hear stories about it, about the Great Plague that Wasn’t, and about all the things that will happen in the next six months. Most of us are too busy living it to remember the daily craziness, but it probably would be worth printing articles here and there.
One noteworthy one I saw yesterday was the Minneapolis City Council, I think it was, telling the people of Minneapolis to get used to crime and to cooperate with criminals. Who would have thought such a headline would be possible in a developed nation? It’s mind boggling.