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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   43405 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025

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If cancel culture was limited to firing people who celebrated political assassinations

The Deputy Secretary of State, on his official X account, said that "praising, rationalizing, or making light" of Kirk's death was grounds for visa revocation, and encouraged Karens to report wrongthinkers. That goes beyond "firing people who celebrated political assassinations" - it is a much broader category of prohibited wrongthink, as well as being a threat of government action. "Making light" would cover a lot of perfectly normal behaviour.

Visas are a privilege with many restrictions. These people have no right to be here and can enjoy celebrating the murder of Americans in their home country. We don't need them to do that here.

First link on Google:

“The Department may revoke a visa when it receives derogatory information directly from another US Government agency, including a member of the intelligence or law enforcement community,” the manual says.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has terminated hundreds of visas under a rarely used provision that allows for revocation if a person’s presence in the US “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

Having a job is also a privilege with restrictions, and in 49 of the 50 states you have no right to keep it.

If you want to make the case that cancel culture is good when applied to resident foreigners but bad when applied to W-2 employees, then you can do so. But cancel culture is still cancel culture, even when it is entirely legal.

I think that "Be careful what you say, Big Brother is watching" is socially corrosive in all circumstances, and accordingly that people should not be cancelled for ill-chosen jokes, regardless of the details of the jokes or the cancellation.

This is comparing like with unlike. There is a general right for citizens to work; there is no non citizen generalized right to travel to the U.S.

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