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If Americans Are Cold on Cancel Culture, It Makes Me Think It's Probably A Good Idea. But...? [1]

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Date: 2023-07-13

As an older person who’s lived overseas and like many come back to feel a really sharp culture shock in terms of the lack of sincerity in American culture compared to most others, I’ve always been reflexively in favor of so-called Cancel Culture. From what I’m seeing in online polling info, that puts me in the minority, which in America is often a pretty good place to be quite frankly.

In media, Cancel Culture is synonymous with the concept of “ethical consumerism.” Almost all of us at this point are pretty heavy consumers of media, whether it’s online, on social media apps, or watching and listening to entertainment, etc. Every producer of media content is hoping that we consume it. Ethical consumerism is essentially a personal boycott of products and services that you find morally objectionable. It’s everyone’s American right to buy the things that you find acceptable and avoid the ones that you don’t. Anything else would be communism or fascism or some other form of historically anti-American ism. If anything, America is about the freedom to buy what you prefer.

In families, friend circles, churches, communities, places of employment etc… Cancel Culture takes on a different slant. Personally, I’m still very much for it. But there are many others who see it as problematic, specifically Christians who prioritize the concept of forgiveness. For myself, I believe that the Christian concept of forgiveness has been bastardized and abused to intentionally permit the bad behavior of the purveyors of American Christianity throughout our history: ie men and more specifically rural white men. And pastors and priests of course. Forgiveness has been used as a weapon of domination and control by Christians in America. This concept was portrayed so clearly in the recent movie Women Talking, and I was both shocked and gladdened to see something I’ve talked about and believed for a long time made into a Hollywood movie. I felt seen, as they say. That’s why I believe that Americans need to rethink their conception of forgiveness and start to see it for what it is much in the way more modern takes on racism talk about intersectionalism and the distinction between being an anti-racist and an assimilationist. There is still evolving that needs to be done on the concept of tolerance and forgiveness in America. We’ve tolerated too much bad behavior in our history. And we’ve forgiven it so quickly and easily that the bad behavior stays with us more than it should.

Beyond whether Cancel Culture is a good idea or a bad idea, the reality is that the younger generations seem to be imposing it. I think they should. And the youth always eventually win via simple attrition. I hope. And I say this as an older person, remember. Will the perception (rightly or wrongly) of Cancel Culture being a liberal agenda item hurt us politically? Maybe. I think that’s still yet to be seen. Judging by the way Fox News and so-called conservative Democrats constantly harp on it, I think they believe it will.

And yet, I still believe the bottom line is this: Whatever The Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomers, and Gen X and Y have done… it hasn’t worked. Climate Change is here for us. Admiration of actual fascism as an acceptable spoken political affiliation in conservative America is as intense as it’s been since I was born, at least. The Millennials and younger generations see all of this and they’re saying that what we’ve done simply hasn’t worked. Our prioritization of social cohesion, forgiveness, whatever you want to call it… they’re saying it hasn’t worked to fix the worst problems or make things better for the next generations. And it’s true. So whatever anyone older than the Millennials thinks about Cancel Culture personally, there should be part of us that has to admit that they’re right about that and they probably also deserve the chance to try it their way. In truth, it’s irresponsible of the failures to reprimand the new batch who are coming in and trying something different rather than just repeating failed experiments. Whatever our intuition might be, whether we’re part of the Peace and Love movement or rock and rollers who want everyone to just suck it up and tough it out... whatever brand of liberal we were when we were young that makes us feel like we’ve got some sort of credibility… I personally think it’s time to try it their way (the Millennials) and certainly apply the concept of ethical consumerism (Cancel Culture) to corporations and media personalities (ie idols and role models, despite what anyone intends or wants). I also support the concept of applying it to individuals and family members. America needs to become more like Europe in this sense and focus less on the cohesion of the nuclear family and more on holding people accountable.

However, this being a political blog populated by what may be an unusually large proportion of older folks (I’m not sure of the demographics but it seems that way), I understand your priorities are about winning elections, so I’m not sure where people will shake out on the concept of Cancel Culture. Whatever the case, I think given the prominence of the mentions it gets in rightwing media, the left should develop a way of talking about it one way or the other… a way of talking about it in support, a way of talking about it less in support and more as something Republicans are hypocritical to condemn, or some other commonly agreed on type of political rhetoric. I don’t think it’s a topic that Maga fascists and Fox are going to let go of.

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