The Cancer of the Cancel Culture
Left unchecked, the “cancel culture” of today will spell the death knell of our Constitution, tomorrow, and this will happen in the flash of a moment, sooner than we might have otherwise thought.
Cancelled by Linked-In, Twitter, and Facebook seven months prior to the latter’s cancellation of America’s forty-fifth President, these big tech social media monopolies erased my profile irretrievably and entirely, as though I never existed in the first place. Linked-In and Twitter did so with neither notice nor explanation, and at the same moment (June 14th), followed by Facebook a fortnight later (July 4th). At the time I thought that it was the on-line equivalent of capital punishment. Soon, I came to realize it was as if they had also erased my birth certificate, as though I never existed in the first place. Twelve years, five thousand Facebook “friends,” another sixteen hundred followers by others who hadn’t “friended” me, and all vanished in a moment, gone for good.
That’s what the cancel culture seeks- extermination and erasure of any and all viewpoints which stray from the orthodoxy of globalist and leftist ideology…
…and make no mistake, the cancel culture is a cancer on our Constitution and the rights guaranteed in that document are imperiled as never before.
Within the next ten days, the Senate is expected to take up the second impeachment of President Trump- this time after he had already vacated the office from which they were attempting oust him, ex post facto. Never mind the fact that forty-five Republicans of all stripes in the U.S. Senate voted not to consider the Article of Impeachment. The usual suspect and predictable horses’ asses- Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Susan Collins (R-ME), Mitt Romney (R-NV), Ben Sasse (R-NE), and Pat Toomey (R-PA)- none of whom can resist an opportunity to take yet another swipe at Donald Trump- joined with that oh-so-moderate Joe Manchin (D-WV) who once again voted unanimously along with his Chuck Schumer (D-NY) -led caucus, to proceed with an impeachment trial. Why these five Republicans don’t change their party affiliation boggles the mind, but there it is… the last vestige of the go-along-with, get-along-with, milquetoast, middling and mindless establishment Republicans whose cross-the-aisle entreaties only serve to make them the laughingstock of Democrats who will never come to love them as they would otherwise wish.
Taken another way, Trump’s post-presidential impeachment stands a mere twelve votes away from what would amount to a first-ever disqualification from seeking a second term or other political office- the ultimate cancellation of a former president and a ceremonious “f@%* you” to the man they never accepted as President in the first place. The deployment of tens of thousands of National Guard troops to seal off the U.S. Capitol has far less to do with the January 6th breach of the Capitol, and far more to do with a contrived theatrical production designed to convince a watching nation that it is Trump and his supporters who pose the biggest threat to our national security.
Meanwhile, politicians in both parties continue to use the China coronavirus as an excuse to keep schools and places of worship closed, businesses shuttered and masks mandated, despite the fact that none of these draconian assaults on individual freedom serve to contain the spread of this pandemic. Continuation of these policies will inevitably lead to more and more restrictions on our liberties, liberties which now dangle on the precipice of forever being taken away from us…
…and the cancer of the cancel culture will metastasize and spread to bring death to our Constitution and all the attendant freedoms entailed therein.
-Drew Nickell, 29 January 2021
© 2021 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times, published 2016, All That Rendered Trump- and What Led Up to His Election, published 2020, and The Broom, published 2020, available at amazon.com.
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