A recent article railing against “Cancel Culture” by Matthew Hennessey is a reasonably decent piece about how the vicious virtue signaling of woke leftists destroys the country and culture itself. In Hennessey’s article, he argues that Generation X is the only thing that can stop it. He offers a rallying cry to other members of his generation to stand up against the Army of the Offended to save free speech and expression.
We grew up in a country that didn’t ban books. We all agreed that witch hunts and blacklists were bad. Censorship was an outrage. The 1980s were not that long ago. Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.
So obviously we’ve got a problem here. Everybody can see it. Everybody knows where it’s heading. What we don’t have — yet — is a group of people who are willing to do something about it.
I nominate us.
The generation that fought for its right to party should be leading the charge against these millennial Maoists terrorizing the culture via social media. Why aren’t we?
Generation X is generally defined as the demographic of people born between 1965 and 1980.
Fair enough. But, Millennials did NOT invent Cancel Culture
Hennessey’s article is worth the read, particularly if you’re a member of Generation X. However, he, unfortunately, misses the point of what’s happening and who is responsible.
Laying the blame for cancel culture at the feet of millennials is incredibly short-sighted. The millennial generation inherited an America offering service jobs instead of high-wage skilled employment, a higher education system staffed with radical Marxist activists, and an entertainment industry designed to promote the destruction of traditional American culture.
It wasn’t millennials who allowed government programs to destroy the traditional family structure and promote separation or allowed the government to shred the Constitution and initiate unprovoked foreign wars. Most of that was accomplished before millennials were old enough to read, let alone vote. As a result, most millennials are too busy working three jobs to survive while being blamed for every ill of society before or after their birth.
Millennials didn’t invent cancel culture. Christian Conservatives were proud purveyors of canceling what they deemed inappropriate for decades. Only now, when Christian Conservatives are among those being canceled, do they oppose it.
What is it that makes Generation X so unique?
Hennessey tries to lay it out when he writes:
I’m not saying that the 1980s were some kind of paradise. Tipper Gore launched a censorious crusade against popular music. On the list of “filthy” songs compiled by her Parents Music Resource Center was “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister and “She Bop” by Cyndi Lauper. Believe me when I tell you that every teenager in America was horrified. All the cool kids protested and jeered — not at Twisted Sister and Cyndi Lauper, as they might do today if the woke mob called for it, but at Mrs. Al Gore, who was obviously sticking her nose where it didn’t belong.
What’s more, the artists who were targeted by the PMRC fought back and just about everybody agreed they were right to do so. Dee Snider didn’t apologize for having given offense and slink away like a pathetic, spineless slug. He waltzed into a Capitol Hill conference room, looked ’em straight in the eye and, in not so many words, told them to back the f–k up.
He’s right. But what he fails to mention is that “just about everybody” agrees the same today. Like in the ’80s, it is a dominant, loud minority that clamors for canceling and erasing anything they disagree with. The difference is that today, that dominant minority is winning. He’s right to point out that it’s the young people – the generation that typically wants edgy, entertaining, and racy things to be drawn to the forefront – that is now racing everyone, including each other, into the Gulags.
Let’s not dwell on which age group is more effective or which rock stars are better spokesmen
Hennessey should remember, Dee Snider, who rightly made Tipper Gore look like a fool, has become a facilitator of that culture unwittingly by lending credence to the claims that anyone who questions the narrative of COVID is a “COVID denier,” questions COVID restrictions is a “moron,” and supports Trump is an “idiot.”
To be fair, he’s firing the gun to have anyone canceled, but he hands the shooters ammunition. Keep in mind Snider did personally cancel Trump when he publicly declared Trump’s policies and statements so horrible that the two could no longer be friends. If only Dee found things like the bombing of Syria or the deindustrialization of his own country as abhorrent.
Snider was a rebel when depravity needed revolutionaries to push the bounds of morality to the brink. Now, when the insurgents are those questioning mass hysteria or neoliberal trade policies, he can sit back and relax in complete virtue, his signal beaming to the rest of the world.
American culture has been manipulated and transformed since the late 1800s and into the roaring twenties. That manipulation began full swing in the 1960s and every generation since. A growing indoctrination in the schools and entertainment industry has brought Americans from a culture where free speech and expression were paramount to one where words are literal violence.
And such was the strategy of Marxist activists all along. Marxism, after all, is not the subtle implementation of political platform points but the destruction of all culture, structure, and systems that exist in a target nation. The economic system by which it operates must be destroyed. The family unit must be destroyed. Civility and tolerance must be destroyed. Critical thinking must be destroyed. The result is cultural anarchy and an authoritarian dictatorship.
In other words, out of the death of the old comes the new
JK Rowling and Margaret Atwood, creators of Harry Potter and The Handmaid’s Tale respectively, are trying to cancel “cancel culture.” They are among 150 signators in an open letter published in Harper’s Magazine.
Generation X can indeed Cancel Cancel Culture, but not by simply saying they disagree with it. They have first to understand that they are not dealing with a bunch of whiny 20 something brats who want everything their way. After all, who raised that generation? They might start asking themselves how masses of children came to see the world so much differently from their parents. Did masses of parents make a mistake at the same time? Or were there forces at play that influenced the younger generations to pursue a different course?
The truth is that these institutions – colleges, universities, public schools, the television and music industries, social media – have indeed all conspired to manipulate entire generations into the next phase of indoctrination. The generation currently allowing all things to be canceled will be assuming power in a few years. It is a generation that has been trained to see all interactions as a power struggle and all functions of society fundamentally based on power.
Nobody is safe from being “canceled”. If Generation X wants to stop cancel culture, it needs to discover what is driving it. To do that, Generation X needs to stop listening to Dee Snider, and it needs to start reading Karl Marx.
How do we stop cancel culture?
Many of us abhor the cancel culture we see occurring all around us. How do we stop it? Or do you think it has gone too far to be stopped? Share your thoughts in the comments.
About Robert
Robert Wheeler has been quietly researching world events for two decades. After witnessing the global network of NGOs and several ‘Revolutions’ they engineered in a number of different countries, Wheeler began analyzing current events through this lens.
Banking and the new normal:
I wanted to share a story with you about my local bank. I was politely waiting in line to take my turn for approximately 15 minutes before a security guard and employee walked up to me and told me I have to wear a mask to be in their facility. I politely declined the mask and then the proceeded to go get one of their face masks and force me to put it in or leave. I politely placed the mask over my face and walked up to the counter and asked them to give me all the money that I had in my 3 separate accounts and close my account.
Within 5 minutes the bank manager and bank president were standing in front of me and telling me they were going to draw up an ungodly amount of paperwork due to the amount of money I was withdrawing, and I politely agreed that I had all day to wait. They then asked me to not withdraw my money, and I said nothing. Eventually I took all of the money out of 3 individual accounts and walked across the street and deposited all of that money into a competitor facility with NO MASK!! This is the true victory of how all of us a FREE AMERICANS can unite together…let’s be intentional, diplomatic, kind and polite, and then without saying a single word cast the biggest vote about the situations and Marxist agenda’s currently taking place in our country.
WELL DONE!!!
JP Hamilton I fully agree with your actions of engaging in capitalism. You have the Right in that state that maybe others don’t elsewhere have to exercise that decision.
The issue to me is more of what the author talked about which is the canceling of a person’s ability to operate in society without being hamstrung via your demonization as a person. I doubt any bank is going to contact your employer for switching banks….but the purveyors of cancelling do not have a problem filling your social media/email/phones with filth, doxing you and going after your means of income and status within your community. In addition, how do you deal with the propaganda now being used starting in pre-school and K-12? Let alone already established for decades in our colleges and universities? Personally I don’t have solution. In some respects, it’s like you have to tear it down to start over again—and we have the best university system in the world. So, that isn’t a solution. The tribalism fostered by our octogenarians for political leadership aren’t looking for solutions—just how to remain in Power. I’m afraid the potential solution of Howe’s book The Fourth Turning is what may occur. Best read; not explained in a posting.
Good for you … however, it will be interesting to see what comes of the two sets of Suspiciois Activity Reports the banks had to file with FinCen.
Very interesting as I had a similar bank experience over the last two weeks.
I was wearing a face shield which I don’t mind because I can see and breathe. The “bouncer” standing at the entrance told me I had to wear a mask or leave. I said NO and if he wanted to make a deal about it, I was ready to dance. Then I told him I wanted to close my three accounts – and his demeanor changed abruptly.
HOWEVER, they made me come back not twice, not thrice, but four times to “complete” the process of shutting down my accounts. I kept my cool and was going to give them an earful but my time would have been wasted. I doubt even my actions had any effect.
This same bank took over a previous bank where I had happily done business for over 25 years. Everyone knew me and I very much enjoyed doing business with them. The first day this new bank took over, they demanded I supply them with all sorts of personal information that was not required back in the good ol days of opening a bank account. I said NO and they said it was in the Patriot Act that I had to provide the information in order to get into my safe deposit box. I told them I was from Missouri and they needed to “show me” that language in the Patriot Act so they kept me waiting for over an hour while they were calling their attorneys et al. It was also their grand opening so their were balloons and free cake and punch out in the lobby. They finally had to admit they could not find the language in the Patriot Act so they would “LET ME” have access to my belongings. I stand about 5’12” and grew about another 6 inches and told the bank manager he could put it where the sun don’t shine. They never asked for that info again.
PS – you may want to start wearing a mask as the vaccine is rolled out due to the findings of several inquiring minds/studies/research, both past and present, that indicate people who receive vaccines will be shedding and very likely contributing to what will be known as “covid-2021” i.e., the mutated variants that have mutated again. See paper by Geert Vanden Bossche, DMV, PhD, for one.
PPS – since the vaccine is an mRNA vaccine, there are also questions of what could happen to our blood supply once genetically modified blood and plasma hit the blood banks.
re blood supply: I had mentioned that elsewhere. If you ever needed a transfusion, how do you know if the blood came from people who had taken the vaccine? You probably won’t; if you were even in a condition to ask.
Whether you believe it is a means to depopulate the earth, as some say is Bill Gates, et. al’s plan or not, this is going to get nasty very quickly.
I don’t know if you can still bank your own blood nowadays or not like you could years ago. Might be worth thinking about.
.
Remember Arthur Ash dying of AIDS allegedly from contaminated blood?
Well played.
Yep, you absolutely are entitled to kill anyone you happen to infect, because your freedom to kill people is far more important than my right to reasonable protection from your selfish and uninformed aggressions. I suppose you run over folks when you don’t like them, shoot folks who irritate you? Probably not. You prefer much more subtle forms of murder. Nice…
OK…Karen.
How am I now responsible for your health?
If that is the case, you smoke? I says STOP!
You eat fast food? I says STOP!
You eat ultra-processed food stuff, caffeine, alcohol, watch more than 2 hours of TV a day, or in front of a computer, I says STOP!
Drive a fossil fuel burning vehicle, I says STOP!
Keep your thermostat above 60 degrees in the winter and 72 in the summer? I says STOP!
Ummm…..speaking of entitlement. If you want to get a vaccine and you’re confident it works, why must you insist everyone else make the same medical decisions for themselves? I’m neither pro-vax nor anti-vax. I expect the freedom to make my own personal medical decisions, and I want you to have that freedom as well.
Exactly!
“How do we stop cancel culture?”
We dont.
It is a cult like mindset.
There are journalists who think it is their moral imperative to lurk in Clubhouse meetings, and then pounce on the speaker for supposedly saying a derogatory word and then go and report it to the world, as if that is hard core news or journalism. BTW, she got it wrong, the guy never said it. But she remains employed at the NYTs.
Some, but not all, of these people still have the high school mindset. Gossip and rumors are the order of the day.
Facts? NO! Feelings! There is no talking to a person sensibly when they are emotion based. It is like trying to argue with teenager.
Based off what I am seeing in the news, we are already a divided country as it is. It is getting worse. The cancel culture running rampant on college campuses. The new Woke military. Attacks on free speech. Attacks on math?
Why would we want to be part of that kind of society?
We are already seeing two differing societies forming. Social media sites for one group and another for the other group. News sites. Apps. Even facts. How much longer before we start seeing new private schools that opt out of wokeness curriculum/indoctrination? Private colleges? Businesses? If I was the owner of a engineering company, it would not be hard decision of who to hire: The applicant with the degree from a college that focused on STEM? Or the one who argues 2+2=5?
Informally formally separate ourselves from each other.
You do you over there.
I will do me over here.
Fortunately “Cancel Culture” has not found a hold in where I live…yet. Abrogation is the word of the day. The collective “we” have allowed schools, politics, the media, et al. to get to the condition they are. We got complacent, comfortable, greedy and selfish. In other words exhibiting basic Human Nature: basic reasoning and common sense are no longer practiced! We are beyond the tipping point where change can be affected without great upheaval…IMO. So now we enjoy the ride as the slow decent into the morass has become an express elevator into dare I say even more madness? I don’t even recognize the United States I grew up in! The one I actively defended with my brothers and sisters during the height of Gen X! So who “brings Democracy” to us as we did so many times overseas? Cough, cough…I may have been part of that effort overseas more than a few times (tongue in cheek)! More cliches…we are reaping what we have sewn. People like to be told everything is going to be all right (even when it isn’t). They want to flock to those personalities that make them feel better about themselves and the horrible life choices they have made: responsibility for your actions are optional! Uncle Sugar will take care of you: you deserve it! Yes that “thermal bloom” you can see from space is the temperature from the printing presses at the Treasury Dept. It’s all good. Nothing too see here…move along.
Cancel Culture is not the problem, it is just a symptom.
It is just a cog in the Machine that is set up to destroy Western Civilization as we know it.
It is good to recognize it as a threat and to stand against it.
However it is not the main problem
whether it is cancel culture, climate change. Progressive Liberalism or the Green “new deal”, or Globalism, etc., they are all just cogs in a machine.
There is a far greater threat, one that we can not stop.
All we can do is prepare for its arrival.
Enslavement of the Human race by a few despotic families is the ultimate goal. They have the money and the power to make that plan a reality. It is already in motion.
They have lots of Useful idiots working for them, they are the ones we see, that make the limelight and the news. They have a lot of “Cannon fodder” foot soldiers also, like Antifa.
Although I believe that their plan will ultimately fail, it won’t be because of us.
They will cause their own downfall and God will see that it occurs, as their plan does not fit with his Plan.
But it will destroy Western Civilization, as we know it.
Part of what is stopping (so to speak), the rise of the Anti Christ is Western Civilization, Democracy and the Super Powers. Once they are destroyed. Then the End Times will start to play out as God has planned and foretold us, though not right away. These things take time to occur, as new nations and political and religious systems rise and come to power out of the ashes of the old system.
So this Cancel Culture is just a stepping stone on the path to The End Times.
hey there daisy !!!! Id like to speak to you about something good, if you could give me your email.
You can reach us at [email protected] 🙂
I’m not sure anything can be done to stop cancel-culture. I suspect that it will be like the French Revolution, where the members of the Committe for Public Safety found themselves following in the footsteps of those they had sent to the guillotines, followed by a strong-man who wins the hearts of the masses by putting an end to the madness and focusing attention on ventures abroad and the greatness of the nation, which will then be squashed by a greater globalist order.
Probably accurate, @The Alarmist. Nothing is new under the sun. The ancient Greeks and Romans practiced the cancel culture: damnatio memoriae.
Most notable is that history does indeed repeat itself. Even post-modern European nations (30-50 years ahead of us in cultural trends) are pushing back against cancel culture, unchecked immigration and other signs of the decline and inevitable collapse of a powerful and influential society.
We have to counter with key words, you know the kind that is “insulting.” They use Nazi, Racist, fascist, sexist and so on. These are trigger words that create a non-thinking cult response. So we have to counter that with stronger trigger words. The cancel culture wording is too friendly. It doesn’t carry historical negative energy.
Agreed. There has to be some “conversational” way to exact natural justice in the moment. Kindof like the natural justice of touching a high-power electric fence; it won’t happen twice.
I have used cancel cancer as my personal term for over a year and make many references to this cancer that is trying to kill an entire country.
When they call me words like racist, Nazi, fascist, sexist, and so forth, I know I’ve won the argument, and inform my opponent of that fact. “By saying that, that means that I’ve won because you don’t have a good argument to counter what I said.” They usually don’t know what to say after that.
Most excellent. I must remember that…
I think it has gone too far to easily cancel without a revolution of some kind. I don’t necessarily mean war revolution but something intense and difficult. I think we are beyond the well meaning but naive advice to change local government, vote with our shopping choices, etc.
The Marxism is institutionalized. It was intentionally embedded into our pre-K through secondary education, it is in all of our entertainment systems. The average person has been saturated in it for decades, if not their whole life.
What is the difference between “Cancel culture” and “organized boycotts”? I don’t see any difference. Yes, we are more interconnected today than we were 20-50 years ago. (We’re more interconnected this year than last, too.) But, we are no more consistent in canceling proponents of adverse rhetoric, than we were of “evil Barbie dolls”.
(If a person told me “there is no equivalence”, I’d point to the attempts to “cancel abortion”. There is literally no difference aside from terms and phrases used. Kaepernick was “cancelled”/”boycotted” by the NFL. Same effect, different phrasing = no difference.)
The big difference that I see currently is one of technology expedience. It is one thing to advocate and have the conversation about changing something in the culture that you don’t like or don’t agree with. It is far different to collude with politicians, the media and technology overlords to “erase” the opinions that you don’t like.
Maybe two sides of the same coin. Maybe just an inevitable modern evolution from one to the other. But it seems that a conversation and honest debate is preferred to what the “cancel culture” of today looks like.
I would like to relate a story to you. On Monday my husband and Andrew drove to Canyon Lake, Texas to pick up a load of wood. At the same time Andrew, who is 21 years old, was picking up a “rescue” dog. It was to be a dog for the whole family. Andrew lives with his parents. His father has a brain tumor so Andrew chooses to stay at home to help and works doing odd jobs. There is little to no work out in our area. My husband introduced Andrew to some friends who live in the Canyon Lake area. Our friend informed me later that it was nice to meet a young man who didn’t drink or smoke, was polite and did not have tattoos. Andrew was home schooled when he was 9 years old. The school district out here was not one I would of sent my children to either. Not all of this new generation is cancel culture. In Waco, I visited homestead heritage. The children are also home schooled. They are well mannered and polite.
Cancel culture is a result of bad parenting by the Boomers. I can say that because I’m a Boomer that complained at the time, but was not able to change the course.
I think it began with participation trophies. “No one loses!” It was not just tolerated, it was encouraged, then demanded and then imposed. Instead of saying “I got this!”, the phrase that got results became the whining “That’s not fair!”. Then came the imposed fairness, rather than the ‘suck it up’.
That entitled generation that the Boomers raised took that upbringing and enhanced it into what we have today. Boomers put it in the curriculum for all to learn, and the natural follow through became the Social Justice (after all, no one loses) and Equal Outcomes that drive the lefties who are driving the country unopposed.
Following human nature to get rewarded and admiration, it’s now a competition to be the better victim. My neighbor has $1 more than me; That’s not fair. I want it. My neighbor has a better life than me; That’s not fair. Bring him down to my level, or lower.
How do we undo 50 years of training? I don’t think we do. There are too few willing to stand up and say, “No.” There are even fewer who believe that the first person you should seek help from is yourself.
And, sadly, I don’t think we’re anywhere near the bottom.
Well said. I concur.
The wonderment of cancel culture is not that we have a class of agitators and crybullies — we have always had that. The wonderment is that people in positions of power — who in the past were accomplished adults and knew how to act like adults — are bowing to them.
Back in the day, when an obstreporous student group gave university administrations some outrageous ultimatum, they were routinely encouraged to find permanent opportunity elsewhere, often with the aid of the Campus Police. Now administrators take their marching orders from this tiny minority, like a cadre of bullied little girls. Same for the “adults” who run banks, retail chains, restaurant brands, media outlets, and communication services.
What the hell happened to preserving America and its rights in the hands of responsible adults?
Back in 1993, Jefrey Snyder penned an essay entitled “A Nation of Cowards.” Though its main thrust was the issue of gun control, its underlying thesis predicted our current situation well before it became as apparent as it has now. Now that the bulk of American society has at last exposed its own shame as an indisputable nation of cowards, It is worth re-reading.
While we decry the cancel culture, we must also admit that there are certain books that the world would have been a better place had they never been published.
One that fits the bill is “The Origin of the Species” by Charles Darwin. Because of that book, he can be called the worst mass murderer the world has seen. In writing that book, he was neither a scientist nor original. He merely popularized beliefs that were already current in ancient Greek pagan religions over two thousand years earlier. He wrote it out of hatred for Christianity, which said that his family led dissolute lives. Those who followed it have practiced genocide. That book also provided the intellectual fig leaf for the next work.
“The Communist Manifesto” and its companion “Das Kapital”. Thanks to those works, over 200 million people suffered premature deaths in the 20th century.
“Rules for Radicals”, a book promoting lies and hate. His ideas only destroy, they don’t build up. The author of this book would have done less damage to society had he remained a bookkeeper for the Mafia.
Hard core pornography. This treats people only as objects to be used, abused and discarded. While many people can take pleasure in it while keeping in control, young people physically mature but emotionally still immature can be led by such to act out in inappropriate ways. A personal story—I once knew a boy who at 14, a few months after i moved to another state, found a stash of hard core porn. He tried it out, first by molesting his younger siblings, then even raping fellow students at school, until finally in his 20s he got caught. I haven’t heard from him in decades.
And yes, we can include song lyrics that promote violence and objectivization of woman, only to be used, abused and discarded.
The difference between Christianity and the present cancel culture is that Christianity uses moral suasion asking that people not to promote such destructive ideas into the culture, while the present cancel culture uses brute force to silence those who don’t toe the line. Governments in the past acted to limit the spread of destructive ideas as listed above, but that is government, not Christianity. Robert Wheeler is wrong there. It’s only a small step for the cancel culture to go from forcibly silencing to killing.
The cancel culture is part of a larger cultural shift, and I’m afraid that only bloodshed will decide which cultural movement will prevail.
And so the plutocrats and oligarchs rule. Subvert the left to totalitarianism, social justice, righteous indignation, and cancel culture. Then get the right to blame and revile the left and their “Marxist agenda” for all the problems in the world. Then sit back laughing, laughing, at those of us poor dupes who still think that terms like ‘left’ and ‘right’ have any meaning. The mega-rich rule and live like emperors and the rest of us squabble among ourselves over whatever crumbs they can be bothered to toss out to us.
How do you feel about Mötley Crüe?
“Marxist Agenda”
the marxist agenda is a front. it’s bait to attract the discontented to destroy the existing order for the “marxists” thinking that they’ll have a place in the new order. but they won’t.
it’s dirt simple. this is all being driven by a parasite genocidal tribal slaver cult. they think they are the humans and that everyone else is nothing more than talking animals put here by god to serve them, to be eliminated if we don’t. that’s the long and the short of their motivation. in every generation they pretend to be just like us while working as a team in the background to subvert and capture any nation that tolerates their presence. they pretend to be oppressed to generate sympathy, identify any injustice with the society they live in to generate hatred for that society, and promise free money and high social standing in the new order to anyone who supports their overthrow of the existing order. that’s it. that’s all there is to them.
Interesting picture.
If “X” marks (Marx) the spot” tell me why Ronald Reagan is left of center along with the people on top of the breached Berlin Wall? Why is George Bush Sr. to the far right of center instead of left of center? Why is Bush even in the collage of pictures?
It’s just a stock photo we purchased then overlaid on the word “cancel”, Tom. Don’t read that much into it.