A query on cancelculture

I ask you, reader: What makes ordinary people buy this bullshit?

I had a discussion with the missus today about what makes normal people side with the cancelculture crybabies.

By “normal” I mean people who are not overpaid members of our political and media clerisy, and who instead struggle or at least put in effort to make a living by performing useful services. This would include both the poor and the middle-class, though I doubt many of the former are concerned with or even aware of the largely self-generated travails of Bari Weiss, Jordan Peterson, or Joshua Katz.

That would leave the bourgeoisie, and polls suggest that some of us, at least, seem to think cancelculture is a thing. Of course, that may just be misdirection. From the New York Times’ report on their and Siena College’s March poll on the subject:

However you define cancel culture, Americans know it exists and feel its burden. In a new national poll commissioned by Times Opinion and Siena College, only 34 percent of Americans said they believed that all Americans enjoyed freedom of speech completely. The poll found that 84 percent of adults said it is a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem that some Americans do not speak freely in everyday situations because of fear of retaliation or harsh criticism.

The “however you define cancel culture” is a massive tell (as is the fact that this is the New York Fucking Times, deeply back on its bothsider bullshit) that they’re thumbing the scale. The poll crosstabs show some hilariously leading questions; for example, “Questioning the scientific credibility of public health officials — [do] most people you know support/oppose a person’s right to engage in this speech[?]” suggests that if, like any reasonable person, you and your buddies think anti-vaxxers should go throw themselves off a cliff, that might qualify as “opposing their right” under this rubric, rather than just thinking they’re a bunch of assholes. (“Support” still came out ahead 61%/32%.)

Interestingly, the crosstabs also show the right of “demonstrators calling to ‘defund the police’” to be far more cancelcultured, at 38%/56% — which somehow goes unmentioned and unlamented in the Times story.

That whole poll is a nightmare. Take the $64 question, “how free do you feel you are to express your viewpoint on a daily basis without fear of retaliation, censorship or punishment” — I mean, for anyone who ever wanted to say “Stick it up your ass, boss,” or “Jesus, lady, just spit out your order and get the fuck out of the way, I only get 30 minutes for lunch,” or “If you don’t stop singing along with that fucking Beatles documentary I’ll rip your goddamn nuts off,” but refrained for obvious reasons, this is a golden opportunity to feel like, why, yes, yes I too am a victim of cancelculture, just like whatshisname the professor who fucked his students and whatshername the actress who circulated anti-Semitic posts!

Anyway, there are plenty of these polls and a lot of respondents do say oh, yes, cancelculture is very very bad, and while I think leading questions and the endless brigading by the bothsider press are large factors, they don’t entirely explain it.

So here’s another reason for it that occurred to me when the missus and I were batting it around: Maybe it’s like how people enjoy reading celebrity gossip stories about famous people who are experiencing heartbreak and loss, a la the endless thwarted passion of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston or “Why Melanie Griffith Just Can’t Keep A Hubby!” etc.

The celebrities remain rich and pampered no matter how much they may moon over their lost loves or suffer from personal tragedies; they can hire therapists and escorts and platoons of fake friends and take drugs you and I have never even heard of to get their minds off their troubles.

But we all know people who feel — or, tbh, perhaps we have felt ourselves — gratified to know that these creatures of tinsel and glamour, though they will never know the need to work or fear of bankruptcy and homelessness that are our own lot in life, yet experience negative emotions just as we peasants do — that they are “just like us,” after all.

Such stories keep a fella from flinging away his fan magazine and crying, “Why am I concerning myself with some rich prick who wouldn’t piss on me if I were on fire? Smash the state!”

Maybe cancelculture stories are something like that for fans of capitalism: True, the 1% live off our labor and would have us arrested if we stole scraps from their table, but sometimes they fuck up and are in consequence shamed out of their sinecures and board memberships — which in a way is like when I stuffed a bunch of kaiser rolls down my pants and went ‘hey guys lookit me, I’m Fat-Ass Frank,’ and my boss Fat-Ass Frank saw it and fired me, causing me to lose my car and my apartment. They may not know what my suffering is like, but I know what theirs is like — so in a way, I’m their superior.

Or maybe it’s something else. What do you think?