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In the days following Charlie Kirk's murder, has seen a wave of employers being contacted regarding off-color remarks made by employees on social media about his passing. The debate is, does this constitute cancel culture, but by the right instead of the typical left? Some have argued that it is not the same thing, due to the disparaging comments being immediate, vs old comments dredged up in an attempt to cancel someone. There is a big difference between someone desecrating Charlie Kirk in an overt manner right after his passing, compared to a social media post made 10+ years ago against living targets that could be deemed as racist only under the most uncharitable light.
My take is, contacting an employer with the intent of getting someone fired for something not work-related or fired in the public interest as a 'concerned citizen', by definition, is cancel culture. Sure, one can argue that this is a different degree of cancelation, but it's the same principle. Someone posting a vile comment on his social media celebrating someone's death doesn’t necessarily affect his ability to do his job, like making sandwiches or whatever. Sure, if said individual confessed on social media to spitting in customers' sandwiches or making disparaging remarks about customers, go ahead and get his ass fired to protect the customers if no one else. But this is not like that. Consumers and other employees are not negatively affected by an employee holding a grudge against a dead podcaster.
To turn the tables, imagine if George Soros died and many of those same people wrote "good riddance" on their social media accounts, should this be grounds for cancelation? By the above logic, yes if you want to be morally consistent.
relevant tweet https://x.com/politicalmath/status/1967066826590028174
Yes it does. And it is wrong. But before armistice is offered, the right is entitled to extract it's pound of flesh.
Didn't they already do that by getting that Home Depot cashier fired after the Trump shooting? How many pounds of flesh will it take before we're back to even and can start behaving in a civilized way?
There's this great asymmetry that few seem to notice. The right gets to cancel in the immediate aftermath of one of theirs eating a bullet. The left gets to cancel all the time for a great many reasons. Personally, I'm happy that general norms of polite society still blanch at literally celebrating our murders in front of our families. For now.
I know these things are uncoordinated. But if you were the left, why the hell would you declare an armistice when this is the state of play? The only rule you have to abide is to not celebrate immediately after a righty is killed. And even then, many are morally too far gone to even follow that one rule.
Because the 2028 election will probably be determined by which side acts less obnoxiously hysterical in the next 3 years. If the republicans spend that time shrieking about transgenderism and canceling people, the democrats have a good chance at recapturing the normie vote. The 2024 election proved to anyone paying attention that any flavor of smug wokeness is not good politics. So we can either have a continual orgy of vengeance in which each side takes power, alienates the normies and then loses in 4 years, or both sides can decide to actually try winning.
I'm not sure that both sides' actions are comparable. The left cancelled people for relatively mundane political opinions and for making edgy jokes. Normies felt like you had to walk on eggshells under ascendant leftism. The right is cancelling people who say really tasteless things about someone who just got murdered in front a large crowd that included his wife and kids. They are also bashing trans people, but I think the vast majority of normies have mixed feelings about trans at best. The right is not going to cancel you if you make an edgy joke about women or blacks or if you express support for Gavin Newsom or whatever. I don't think most normies feel threatened by the right in the same way.
And for having your hand hanging out of the window of your truck.
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