Cancel culture?

George Will is back to his true form, pissing me off royally with his attack on the protestors, and in so doing, ironically is in lock step with the President whom he abhors with unparalleled passion, just one of many ironies in this most unusual moment. What has their joint ire is some amorphous thing they discount as unAmerican (Trump) and unintelligent (Will), called “cancel culture.”

Just what is “cancel culture”? It is a name, much like “fake news”, given by critics to discredit in this case not the media but a social movement. When an outcry from the “Me Too” movement calls for a TV show to be cancelled because of accusations of sexual abuse by the show’s host, that is “cancel culture.” When revelations of racist or homophobic comments by some celebrity cause venues to cancel a scheduled appearance, that is “cancel culture.” And now, when crowds protesting racial injustice pull down a statue promoting white supremacy or call for the removal of names honoring the promoters of slavery, that too is “cancel culture.”

Here is what Will says of this effort to correct social ills, past and present: Today’s cancel culture – erasing history, ending careers – is inflicted by people experiencing an orgy of positive feelings about themselves as they negate others. The cancellers need just enough learning to know, vaguely, that there was a Lincoln who lived when Americans, sunk in primitivism, thought they were confronted with vexing constitutional constraints and moral ambiguities. The cancel culture depends on not having so much learning that it spoils the statuetoppling fun: too much learning might immobilize the topplers with doubts about how they would have behaved in the contexts in which the states’ subjects lived. The cancellers are reverse Rumpelstiltskins, spinning problems that merit the gold of complex ideas and nuanced judgments in the straw of slogans. As if straw slogans and not racial injustice is the great problem we face.

And Trump in front of four Presidents carved into Mount Rushmore:

Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children. (Audience: Boo.) Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our Founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities. … One of their political weapons is “Cancel Culture” – driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and our values, and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America. (Applause.)

This attack on our liberty, our magnificent liberty, must be stopped and it will be stopped very quickly. We will expose this dangerous movement, protect our nation’s children, end this radical assault, and preserve our beloved American way of life. (Applause.) Make no mistake: this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions form poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress. To make this possible, they are determined to tear down every statue, symbol, and memory of our national heritage.

Well. (To quote one of Will’s favorite phrases.) First, neither Will nor Trump make any acknowledgement of the reasons for this “cancel culture” – the unfettered power of certain elites to do as they please with no accountability. Trump paints this social movement as diametrically opposed to the American Revolution. What was that revolution, but the rising of the masses against the power of tyranny. While there certainly may be excesses in the current movement to correct past and current injustices, it is nothing if not the rising of the masses against the power of certain elites; not the antithesis, but the embodiment of that revolution.

Second, for Will to so callously attack the modest victories of the current movement as engaged in “an orgy of positive feelings about themselves as they negate others” shows absolutely no appreciation for the decades of abuse, humiliation, injustice and often outright violence suffered by so many citizens of this country who happen to not be of the right race, gender or sexual orientation.

One picture on Facebook made this especially clear for me—a young woman, personally known to me, of Native American descent ( and I would add an exceptionally bright and well-educated woman who Will would discredit as someone without sufficient learning to understand historical contexts) standing triumphantly over one such toppled statue of a “Pioneer Father”. Will and Trump, white men of privilege who show no appreciation for, nor understanding of, those who have been silenced for far to long, would educate us on the moral incorrectness of cancel culture? Puh-lease.

Third, the irony of a President of the U.S. who has done more to divide this country than any politician since McCarthy, standing before those particular four Presidents in stone to position himself as the great defender of the American Revolution when just weeks before he used his forces to violently clear out peaceful protestors so that he could have his picture taken with a Bible in front of a church he does not attend, is just too much. Worse is the greater irony when you know just a little bit of that history, as Will rightly advocates, about how we acquired that particular piece of property—considered sacred by the people from whom it was stolen—on which he stood to celebrate our independence, then you hear our President lambast others for defacing “sacred memorials”? Good grief! When has our government shown any respect for the sacred lands of Native people?

Fourth, and many will say this was quite intentional, the President characterizes the protests which have primarily been in support of Black Lives Matter, as a “dangerous movement” and an attack on liberty. How can anyone see that as anything but a dog whistle to those of his supporters who shout “White power”, as in the video he tweeted, and who fear a multi-racial movement that will put an end once and for all to the domination of white privilege in this country? Removing statues and symbols of white supremacy is not, I repeat, it is not an assault on our national heritage, rather it is precisely the fulfillment of the promise of the Declaration of Independence for the liberty of all our people in the sincere belief that all are created equal.

It certainly is fair to debate just how far one should go and whether removing a slave holder’s image from the Civil War era is the same as one from a century before. There should be no question of the former. Leaders of the Confederacy are not people we should idealize. What about our Founding Fathers, many of whom were slave holders? While I for one would not take down their statues, at the same time I would argue that dialogue and debate about that possibility is appropriate and good. To consider the merits of why we should or should not honor such persons is not destroying our national heritage, it is upholding those ideals on which we were founded. Recognizing the failures of our founders is just as important as honoring their achievements. That is not erasing history, it is understanding it. Might it be that we do not want to expose the flaws of our founders because it might shed light on our own? God forbid.

Fifth, finally and maybe most importantly as we approach perhaps our most important election since the election of Abraham Lincoln, consider this last irony. The President of the United States, on the eve of July 4th, called for eradication of dissent (and also the dissenters?) as an attack on our liberty. Read his words carefully. Defining the proponents of this “cancel culture” as advocates of totalitarianism, he then says that their dissent has no place in this country. To eradicate such opposition IS the very definition of totalitarianism.

I lived for three years in Germany, spending much of that time learning about the fascism that nearly destroyed that country and most of Europe. I would not consider myself an expert on such, but I am reasonably informed, probably more than most in this country thanks to that incredible experience made possible by the church. If I learned anything it is this: be terribly cautious, if not outright afraid, when the leader of the country characterizes a group of people, fellow citizens, as contrary to the values of your country, your way of life and civilization itself. Then it was the Jews. Today it might be us.