Let's talk about Cancela culture. Understand that we have relatively
unformed we are in relatively unformed territory in the United States with the current American
right wing. The American right wing is out of ideas. The American right can't win on policy.
Their health care ideas aren't popular. Their economic ideas aren't popular.
Their social ideas are out of the 19th century. They're totally wrong in every way on covid
they don't accept science even on increasingly uncontroversial topics.
They can't win when more people vote. So the right tries to suppress the vote.
Trump, in combination with the Republican right, lost the House in twenty eighteen, lost
the Senate in twenty twenty, lost the White House in twenty twenty, not by a little bit
by a lot. As Trump likes to say, these people's ideas while clinging to support in the United
States are the laughing stock of the world. So as we've talked about before, they make themselves
victims to justify their own existence and because they have nothing else left. And their latest path
in so doing is talking about so-called council culture. And so their entire CPAC Conservative
Political Action Conference that we saw over the weekend was crafted around this idea. The
slogan was America UNcancel. Trump talked about council culture. Many of the speakers did. Now,
I've said this before, but it bears repeating once again, cancel culture as described by the right
does not exist. It's the latest ploy meant to rile people up, just like pretending trans women in
sports is the major issue facing the United States of America. I'm not saying it's not an issue.
It's just not a major issue that relates to the lives of ninety nine percent of the country. Now,
let me be very careful. I whenever I do this, I have to issue a disclaimer to try to save my inbox
and it still won't work, but it'll help if you are going to argue that I'm wrong by emailing me
an article about one person that was unfairly fired for a political view. They tweeted about
or an article about someone who was fired because their political opinion
clashed with that of others in their workplace or something like that. That doesn't disprove
what I'm saying in this segment. I will gladly admit that sometimes there are unfair firings,
just like sometimes there are false rape reports. This is a country of more than 330 million people.
There are examples of everything but basing an ideology around something insanely rare,
pretending that a main policy issue is something that statistically is barely there is a ploy
weaponized by the right to attack, the left to attack organizations, to attack institutions,
to attack social media platforms when the right doesn't like the decisions that they make.
Cancel culture is the perfect ruse for so many right wing goals. Right wing politicians need
to portray themselves as victims, claiming that social media networks and journalists and academia
are all out to get them is the perfect way to do it. Religious right folks need to claim that their
religion is under attack, that Jesus primarily is under attack. This is the perfect way to do it.
Right wing politicians need to raise money. We know that sociocultural issues, real or imagined,
doesn't matter if they exist or not, are great for fundraising. Right wing media needs to make money,
outrage porn about cancelations of Republican politicians or of right wing media itself,
or of Potato Head or Dr. Seuss or whatever. It is perfect fodder for ratings. And importantly,
the right is generally less divided on cultural issues. This goes back a long time. On economic
issues. You see more of a range of views among the right, in part because of the libertarian right in
many studies, including a good one from Vanderbilt University, Republican positions on cultural
issues exist within a much tighter range than they do among the left, so they can easily generate
more unity and more outrage among the right with these cultural issues against a shared enemy. This
is truly the perfect ruse and it's working now. In reality, what they mean by council culture is
that sometimes their speech has consequences and it essentially describes free market capitalism,
which they claim to support. And you know what? That's the way things work. Free speech,
the First Amendment, usually the First Amendment doesn't even apply, but they talk about it.
None of that comes with immunity from the consequences of your speech. That's one of the
elements of capitalism. That's one of the elements of markets. Your speech enters a marketplace of
ideas, and sometimes there are consequences except in very narrowly defined situations.
The consequences to your speech are someone else's free speech, which must also be protected.
What the right wants is carte blanche to continue their policies of economic discrimination,
elitism, xenophobia, homophobia, Christian supremacy, white supremacy,
whatever. Whatever it is they prioritize. They want to perpetuate that and insulate themselves
by using the term council culture to intimidate the left into not criticizing them,
to intimidate the market, into not having consequences for their speech. Let's not fall for
it. Now, give me a specific example of something that was done wrong. I will look at it. If someone
didn't deserve to be fired, I will look at it and I'll tell you they didn't deserve to be fired.
But this is the way that the right is organizing its followers against real progressive change and
to justify their own existence absent any substantive policy ideas going on five years now,
the Trump era was devoid of actual policy completely, and it is now essentially a
grievance movement. And so often, you know, we talk about projection from the right.
There are these enclaves of the right that love to say the left is now just a grievance movement.
When I look at the left, sure, there's some grievance in some circles, but the predominant
left wing movement is around economic equality, accepting science and acting on it. When it
comes to covid, when it comes to climate, when it comes to so many different things, it's about a
15 dollar minimum wage. It's about getting health care to people. It's a there's policy there right
now for the most part. And yes, on the fringes, you have the sort of grievance focused elements
which I have no problem criticizing and have done for years. It is actually the right
via this council culture meme that. Has become uniquely about victim is self
victimization and grievances. Now, next, I want to look at some hilarious examples of
how the right is now going. Absolutely crazy with the council culture story on