Cancel culture is a zero-sum approach to purported sins

 Steve Bigler  "Cancel culture's effects are more pernicious than destroying individuals and forcing self-censorship on Americans — bad as those things are.  Because it allows no room for forgiveness, it creates desolation that can lead to violent responses from people who have lost all hope.

One of cancel culture's intrinsic characteristics is its refusal ever to forgive.  In fact, that's its defining characteristic.  That's why it's a cancel culture.  You can't cancel and forgive at the same time — that's a cognitive disconnect.  . . . 

"As such, cancel culture is primarily a form of virtue-signaling.  It satisfies the imposer more than any supposed victim.  In fact, the true victims have often died and passed on generations ago.  Canceling people from the distant past obviously doesn't change anything they did.  It doesn't change the actual events of history.  The virtue-signaling is merely a form of attention-seeking behavior

"The practitioners of cancel culture should be careful.  Their approach means that the parameters of safe thought and expression tend to shrink and become ever stricter, with safe behavior becoming a moving target that changes daily.  This is typical of all attention-seeking behavior.  The status quo never garners sufficient attention.  That fluidity drives extremism, so today's practitioners may easily become tomorrow's victims.

"With all this in mind, we should think long and hard before embracing a mindset that a single offense merits permanent banishment of an individual or group from human society.  Such an approach will not end well.  It never has."

Maybe the pendulum is starting to swing on cancel culture  . . . "In the face of Morgan's refusal to do the usual groveling that we've come to expect from celebrities on the receiving end of the woke mob's cancel culture, something amazing happened.  While 41,000 may have whined about Morgan, over 220,000 people had petitioned for Morgan to be returned to Good Morning Britain.

"Those numbers are an excellent and much needed reminder that cancel culture is driven by a vocal minority.  The majority of people who resent it still have the power to push back."

On Monday, I said I didn’t believe Meghan Markle in her Oprah interview. I’ve had time to reflect on this opinion, and I still don’t. If you did, OK. Freedom of speech is a hill I’m happy to die on. Thanks for all the love, and hate. I’m off to spend more time with my opinions. pic.twitter.com/bv6zpz4Roe

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) March 10, 2021

 . . . "By the way, if you want to help push back against Critical Race Theory, here's a good cause: William Clark is a high school senior in Las Vegas.  He is biracial, with the "bi" in his racial being black.  His mother, also biracial, is raising him alone.  William attends a charter school, where he is the student with the lightest skin.  The school, therefore, insisted that he denounce himself as a "privileged" "oppressor."  When he refused, the school gave him a failing grade.  Instead of caving, he sued.  You can see his mother on Tucker Carlson here and donate here to help his legal fund.  (I did.)

"And there's one more entrant in the category of people pushing back against cancel culture: Andrew Cuomo." . . .   Read on...

Skidmore student claims ‘cancel culture campaign’ prevented formation of conservative club   . . . "Davis says she and her classmate were targets of a “cancel culture campaign” in which members of the student body created a petition claiming that YAL groups were “springboards for hate speech and bigotry disguised as political discourse.” As of Wednesday, the petition had 1,765 signatures. Skidmore has approximately 2,600 undergraduate students.

"As a result, the Skidmore Student Government Association told Davis she could not establish a YAL chapter due to “concerns of hate speech and making students on campus feel unsafe,” the Albany Times Union reported.

“ 'I actually chose Young Americans for Liberty because I thought that students would be … receptive to it, because it wasn’t a partisan group … I was clearly wrong about that.” Davis said." . . .