“Cancel culture” is one thing I think the Right understands far better than they let on.
You don’t need permission to start avoiding people who always try to harm you. It is “a free country,” after all.
A lot of right-wing figures end up in the crosshairs of what we might call “cancellation efforts” precisely because they are serial predators whose reputations have preceded them into the national consciousness. In this case, the facts have “a liberal bias” because conservative culture is biased toward cultivating and protecting predators, leaving all of us potential victims no choice but to resort to the grapevine for a remedy.
One big reason the Right wants us to stop canceling stuff is that the right-wing aristocracy (e.g. Musk, Alito) crave the respect of their “inferiors.” That’s something that can only be given freely, and they’re fearful of spooking the herd and ruining the flavor of our meat.
So if they understand it, why do they goad their thralls through such pointless mockeries of the real thing? Are they having an effect that we just aren’t noting? Is it a drill? Is it some kind of “standing wave” that emerges when you cram a million ignorant bigots into one tiny echo chamber? Is this inoculating them against mainstream boycotts somehow?
Profits are simply the by-product of putting in some kind of effort. Why bother? Simply controlling the narrative is so much easier and more effective. If they can promote useful idiots like Jordan and Boobert and keep us running in circles over gas stoves and climate change, and prevent reporters from printing what the fuck is actually going on, then it’s simply a matter of taking whatever they want in broad daylight. Do you think people would be okay with the massive redistribution of wealth the 2017 tax law initiated or the billions of free money handed out to massive corporation if they were actually informed about what was going on?
I sometimes feel a bit of gratitude that these people are so ferociously committed to acting like complete blithering idiots, because if they didn’t, they’d have a lot of time on their hands to do even more actual damage than they’re already doing.
I think that sadly applies to most of them. If just half of Democrats had even 1/10 of Clinton’s or LBJ’s charisma and ability to connect with people or even Truman’s ability to cut through the bullshit, we’d be talking about the Republican party in the past tense same as the Whigs…
It was clearly an international conspiracy: the radioactive particles have been traced to nuclear testing.
It’s just a matter of time until we have blue helmeted, jackbooted thugs going through the refrigerated sections of the local market.
