I’m not necessarily proud of my actions. I don’t like the feeling of hurting someone unless it is warranted (which in this case it is) and face-to-face (which in this case it isn’t). And even little ole me runs the risk of my professional life, outside of doing this type of commentary, being ruined by someone who gets offended and can easily find out where I work on LinkedIn. But this had to happen.
A personal friend of mine posted this article (attached) on Facebook. I found this story to be particularly disgusting even considering the latest round of cancelations (and I kinda have a crush on Gina Carano but don’t tell her because she could probably kick my ass). Gina Carano got canceled (fired from her very popular role on The Mandalorian) because of some very uncontroversial social media posts. And by “uncontroversial,” I mean the definition of uncontroversial. The NPR article attached does an awful job of characterizing these posts, unsurprisingly, but they aren’t hard to find and I won’t repost everything here for the sake of time.
I posted the following comment on my friend’s post:
“I think this is a bigger story than the impeachment trial. The cancel culture bullshit is going to destroy everything.”
Very harsh… right? Some people thought so. I received feedback almost immediately from someone I’m not friends with on Facebook. I try not to make judgements like this, but judging by the profile picture and name, I’m assuming this may be a transgender individual (but makes no difference to me). Here was his/her/they/them/xe’s response:
“Here’s what I don’t get - people calling it cancel culture now. When it was Rosie getting canceled because of the NRA, that was okay. When it was Kap getting released after being permanently benched, that was okay. But now that someone has repeatedly made transphobic and anti-Semitic posts and was told by their employer to stop or lose their job (you know, like being written up at our jobs) and then got fired for it - it’s cancel culture & bad.”
I don’t think this response was super malicious or anything, just very dishonest. I’m very good at keeping my cool, but something just made me snap at this point (something I’ve never done before on social media). Here was my measured response, although I admit, I started out soft just to be nice:
“I don’t know much about the Rosie situation with the NRA. I have my own problems with the NRA and if they tried to get her canceled for a dishonest reason, then what they did was wrong. Colin Kaepernick is a different situation. Kap was moving towards irrelevance, including being benched, BEFORE he ‘took a stand’. And at first, I had no real problem with what he did. I figured it was coming from an ignorant place, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt at first. They he came to practice with socks depicting police officers as pigs and wore a Fidel Castro shirt to a press conference. That made it obvious. He wasn’t standing for anything but his own rebranded image. He has had several opportunities to try out for teams and do workouts since but has just made those into political shitshows (making weird demands) and made salary demands outside of his worth as a quarterback. Combine this with his political volatility off the field, and it doesn’t make sense for an NFL owner to take a chance on him, especially considering he would be a career backup at best. Kap is a bad example of cancel culture.
We also never refer to this as ‘cancel culture’ because it didn’t happen this frequently until the last decade or so. There is an outrage mob taking down everyone who doesn’t agree with their rigid ideology but still claim themselves to be ‘liberal’. There is nothing more illiberal than the outrage mob made up of people who aren’t even outraged but are struggling to find relevance, much like Kap.
This brings us to your ‘transphobic’ and ‘anti-Semitic’ characterization of Carano’s posts. Maybe you just didn’t see the original posts and you just took NPR’s characterizations of her posts as truth (which is always a bad idea), but no literate person in the world could read those posts and come away with ‘transphobic’ or ‘anti-Semitic’ as an accurate description without being completely dishonest. The ‘transphobic’ remark was her making a joke on her bio, which also happened to be kind of funny. You have to completely redefine the term in order to consider that ‘transphobic’. It wasn’t hateful. It wasn’t fearful. It offended you. If you get offended by a joke, then YOU are the one who needs to make a change. Go see a psychologist if it hurts your fee-fees that much. Go curl up in bed with your participation trophies, ‘Good Vibes’ blanket, and your copy of ‘A People’s History of the United States’ by Howard Zinn and cry yourself to sleep if you must. Take your immature ideas over to the Kid’s Table and rejoin the adults when you drop the bullshit.
Comparing things to the Holocaust, as a general rule, is a bad idea because there aren’t many things in this world as disgusting and disturbing as the Holocaust, but considering we live in a culture that everything is compared to the Nazis, Carano’s comparison was appropriate. The way you spun this as ‘anti-Semitic’ is so blatantly dishonest, especially considering if the post was anything, it would be the opposite of anti-Semitic. FAKE OUTRAGE.”
I know some of you reading this might think this is relatively tame, but this isn’t something I would normally post or say unless we were talking face-to-face. The reason I don’t do this is because it never convinces the other person to change the way they think, but BS like this is seriously damaging to our society and must be called out.
I’ll end with a perfect quote I saw on The Michael Knowles Show this morning. This quote was a comment Knowles pulled off his YouTube comments and I want to make sure I give appropriate credit. This is by Henry Knox on YouTube (I know nothing about this guy other than this comment):
“When victimhood is currency, there will be lots of counterfeiters.”
I was listening to some news updates when I heard this CNN clip about the potentially hazardous water in East Palestine, and as soon as I heard her ask the question about whether or not her guest would drink the water, I IMMEDIATELY thought of this clip from South Park. Enjoy.
In this special episode of The Engineering Politics Podcast, Truman from Return To Reason is back for a new video and podcast series titled ‘Revisiting The Road To Serfdom’ where we review F.A. Hayek’s classic work, The Road To Serfdom. This episode covers ‘Chapter 15: The Prospects of International Order’.
This will be an ongoing series that covers the entire book. We put a ton of work into making this insightful and relevant, so we hope you enjoy watching/listening as much as we enjoyed reading and recording.
Become a subscriber of the Engineering Politics Locals Community to support this content. Also, consider joining the @ReturnToReason Locals Community to show Truman some support.
In this episode of The Engineering Politics Podcast, I team up with Truman from @ReturnToReason to interview one of the most intelligent and influential creators in the space of philosophy today. Stephen R.C. Hicks is a Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, Executive Director of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship, and Senior Scholar at The Atlas Society. He has written many books including Explaining Postmodernism and Nietzsche and the Nazis. We bring him on to talk about the social and political issues we are currently facing in America, and the West more broadly, and what the collectivist ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau might have to do with it.
Become a subscriber of the Engineering Politics Locals Community to support this content. Also, consider joining the @ReturnToReason Locals Community to show Truman some support.
In this special episode of The Engineering Politics Podcast, Truman from Return To Reason is back for a new video and podcast series titled ‘Revisiting The Road To Serfdom’ where we review F.A. Hayek’s classic work, The Road To Serfdom. This episode covers ‘Chapter 15: The Prospects of International Order’.
This will be an ongoing series that covers the entire book. We put a ton of work into making this insightful and relevant, so we hope you enjoy watching/listening as much as we enjoyed reading and recording.
Become a subscriber of the Engineering Politics Locals Community to support this content. Also, consider joining the @ReturnToReason Locals Community to show Truman some support.
In this episode of The Engineering Politics Podcast, I team up with Truman from @ReturnToReason to interview one of the most intelligent and influential creators in the space of philosophy today. Stephen R.C. Hicks is a Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, Executive Director of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship, and Senior Scholar at The Atlas Society. He has written many books including Explaining Postmodernism and Nietzsche and the Nazis. We bring him on to talk about the social and political issues we are currently facing in America, and the West more broadly, and what the collectivist ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau might have to do with it.
Become a subscriber of the Engineering Politics Locals Community to support this content. Also, consider joining the @ReturnToReason Locals Community to show Truman some support.
In this special episode of The Engineering Politics Podcast, Truman from @ReturnToReason is back for a new video and podcast series titled ‘Revisiting The Road To Serfdom’ where we review F.A. Hayek’s classic work, The Road To Serfdom. This episode covers ‘Chapter 14: Material Conditions and Ideal Ends’.
This will be an ongoing series that covers the entire book. We put a ton of work into making this insightful and relevant, so we hope you enjoy watching/listening as much as we enjoyed reading and recording.
Become a subscriber of the Engineering Politics Locals Community to support this content. Also, consider joining the @ReturnToReason Locals Community to show Truman some support.
