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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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Obviously, as a Christian, I agree with Kanye's point that we should try to forgive even the worst of our enemies and nobody is 100% evil. Universal love is good.

But given that he can't manage to make that point without spending the same breath ranting about "Jewish people ... pushing with the pornography", and IIRC was pushing holocaust denial stuff in the same interview, it's hard not to suspect this is less a case of genuine forgiveness and more a case of not seeing anything to forgive; and hard not to doubt whether he really does feel love and forgiveness in his heart for the "Jewish people" he feels wronged him. (Probably correctly in the case of some specific Jewish people in the industry; but extending that to "the Jewish people" as a class is the exact opposite of Christian fellowship.)

For me, what Kanye is doing isn’t forgiving because you cannot forgive a person without acknowledging the fact that the person did something evil. The reverse, seeking forgiveness, absolutely requires that I acknowledge that I have done evil. You can’t really forgive otherwise because there’s not any reason to. If Hitler did nothing wrong, there’s no reason to forgive. If Kanye thinks that Jews deserved it, or that it never happened, why would he then forgive?

Ironically, this is somehing that's missed in the cancel culture discourse. Now, sometimes the person does admit they were wrong, and things continue, but far more, it's person does or says x, people get upset about it, then there's the backlash to the backlash, then the 'why won't group y forgive person x', and usually, person x still thinks they're in the right. Now, that might be fine and dandy, but then, there should be no discourse about forgiveness or group y moving on, even if you think person x is correct, or shouldn't be sanctioned for what they said or did.

For IRL example, take Eddie Murphy. He said what could be considered by a lot of people some terrible jokes about gay people and women in his 80's specials, that were hugely popular. So, why doesn't a Tweet along w/ a video clip of some joke from Raw never get any traction? Because Eddie doesn't do that kind of comedy anymore really and he's admitted that stuff was shitty to say. So, there's nothing to cancel, because Eddie admitted what he said was dumb, and everybody moved on, which pushes against the idea that's pushed that you'll be shamed forrever if you ever do anything wrong.

People just have to actually believe you're sorry for saying or doing what you did.