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Even people who typically don’t pay a lot of attention to the news are finding out about the left’s cancel culture tactics. You can’t help but see the stories about professors being suspended or fired, media figures being forced to resign, sports icons having to issue multiple apologies for WrongThink. The stories all over social media and all over the evening news at a time when a lot of people are still home out of work and have time on their hands to surf the Internet and watch TV.
It can be overwhelming, and give political junkies and others who follow these stories closely a sense of hopelessness. There’s also the feeling that there is no end in sight, that people on the right are going to give up out of frustration and the left are going to win the cancel culture wars.
I admit I’ve felt frustrated on and off in recent weeks. Watching the left take the outcry over the senseless death of George Floyd and use it to wage war on people they disagree with, while not surprising, has taken place at an alarmingly fast pace for such a short period of time.
As Tucker Carlson said during a recent monologue, it “is unprecedented for an American political movement” like BLM and other left-wing movements to “enjoy almost complete immunity from criticism” and yet it has happened. It’s left people in academia, in newsrooms, and beyond wondering if they’ll be canceled next for merely voicing disagreement.
This brings about a “silencing” ripple. People begin to stop expressing their opinions on Twitter or Facebook out of fear it will be used against them. In places where you’d think the free exchange of ideas would be welcomed, people become tight-lipped or otherwise politically correct, not wanting to upset anyone and not wanting to say anything that can be turned into something it’s not by rage mobs. Only One Opinion is the acceptable one to have, and anyone who deviates from that will be ostracized, their careers ruined.
Yes, this is all happening now to varying degrees across the country, but it’s not going to stay that way.
The pushback is already underway. This is purely anecdotal of course, but in my conservative circles I’m hearing a LOT of talk among people who say friends and relatives they know who normally wouldn’t vote Republican in an election are either considering it or have committed to doing so in November because they are fed up with what they’re seeing happen.
That, along with what I’ve seen even among non-political types on social media, gives me the sense that the left has overplayed their hand on the cancel culture stuff, on all the changing of names, the toppling of statues, etc. and people are ready to fight back. Because the silencing and canceling of opposing voices taking place right now is about as un-American as it gets.
It’s like 2016 is playing out all over again. The polls don’t necessarily reflect this, but then again, they didn’t reflect it in 2016, either.
Between the cancel culture garbage, and the left’s double standards on staying at home to combat the Wuhan virus, I believe there is a “silent majority” who are growing more and more angry at what they’re seeing from the left, and that they will make their feelings known at the ballot box later this year.
This is not a prediction of what the election outcome will be. It’s just a hunch.
As always, stay tuned.
