Cancel Culture not very woke
Mark Greathouse
(2/2023) Censorship…cancel culture…shadow banning…visibility limiting…wokism. What are these often-unjust and at times criminal cultural anomalies derived from? What are woke standards of morality? For today’s op-ed, I’ve lumped leftist dogma, cancel culture, and wokeness together as a one-in-the-same construct.
When I see woke cancel culture in action, I think of the perpetrators as only partially educated. They’ve generally been shielded from contrary viewpoints. The ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu spelled out how to control people, "keep their minds empty and bellies full." Decades have been spent corrupting our education system to the point where supposed academic elites deem themselves entitled to determine what we should and should not know. Censorship and its various manifestations are a byproduct of this phenomenon. The greater the censorship the faster the transition to tyrannical all-controlling governance. Let me be clear, the far right is also often guilty of censorship. The difference is that the political left is more inclined to shut down dissenting debate.
In my tumbleweed research of America’s frontier west, I found it reassuring at how homesteaders, ranchers, merchants, and more saw education as vitally important. By today’s "standards," frontier education was minimalist (e.g., no gender or race studies). It was often delivered in a one-room school housing multiple grade levels and replete books across essential subjects with curricula delivered by someone perceived to harbor enough knowledge to be viewed as a teacher. Their version of social media was via newspapers, personal conversations, and telegraph. There was a de facto censorship of sorts, as long-held values that were rooted in biblical teachings and a sense of respect and common decency were integrated within the culture. Apparently, education back on the frontier effectively reduced the number of folks stupid enough to fall for what we call cancel culture.
So, what on earth has happened to mess things up over the past 150 or so years? There is a certain illiteracy endemic to wokism by virtue of lack of exposure to opposing views. "Constructivism" is the fertilizer for wokism. Have you ever heard of George Berkeley? He’s the father of constructivism which essentially postulates that knowledge is created by individuals reacting to information they receive as opposed to being from a commonly-accepted, morally-bound objective state. Thus, information has no meaning in reality of itself but is what the individual perceives. Common sense becomes a mere personal social construct. For example; constructivism today forms the bedrock upon which censorship by government becomes easy so long as the government-approved message is accepted. Shadow banning or visibility filtering by social media is also an example. Constructivism is the premise for Newspeak in George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984,
as control of information is the slippery slope to tyranny.
Morality? Yours, mine, or theirs? Morally bereft constructivist woke whim of the day versus traditional faith-based morality? It’s like the proverbial house built on sand that crumbles in the storm versus the house built on rock that stands solidly. The wokist cancel culture is atheistic and thereby without any rock-solid moral values.
Where constructivism goes especially awry is when a small segment of counter-culture individuals has an outsized influence on public discourse, falling back to emotion-driven rationales when intellectual reasoning fails them. The outcomes these woke folk deliver provoke serious kerfuffles. It’s easy to win a debate if other side is silenced (beaten into submission), and the woke leftists are well-practiced at silencing dissent from their views. A great example was the vainglorious bureaucrat Dr. Fauci who wouldn’t tolerate dissent from his opinions supposedly couched in "science" that changed constantly and which arguably resulted in far greater life loss for COVID victims. Free speech for wokists but no one else simply doesn’t cut the mustard.
Ironically, wokism is espoused by a small minority of our nation’s population but garners a large voice thanks to its acolytes in media, academia, politics, government, corporations, and education. What do the likes of Meta, American Express, Amazon, Walt Disney Company, Levi Strauss, Bank of America, Apple, Nike, Starbucks, NBA, NFL, and many more organizations have in common? They’ve all caved to the woke cancel-culture agenda such as it is. They lack the spine and moral fortitude to resist the minority wokist gaggle. For example, blatant federal government induced censorship collusion with big tech was strikingly unveiled with Elon Musk’s release of revelatory internal Twitter emails. It’s a sad state of affairs, when industry elites collude with government and the minority cancel culture to shape what Americans are supposed to believe. Heaven forbid there should be any sort of syncretism, the reconciliation or fusion of differing
systems of belief as in philosophy or religion.
Illiteracy among the woke is alarming in its narrow cultural focus. Lao Tzu’s philosophy is delivered today by self-serving bureaucrats and politicians like Dr. Fauci, President Biden, Adam Schiff, Alejandro Mayorkas, and their ilk. Woke cancel culture thus preaches to a rabble made brainless and gullible by a fawning, failing, education system bought and paid for politicians and by a decidedly leftist news media. The cancel culture mostly uses uncertainty and fear as a socio-political bludgeon.
In an era of entitled spoiled brats, wokists are experts at forming social media lynch mobs. Per Karl Marx’s playbook, they relentlessly attack religion (e.g., many Portland rioters used Bibles as fire starters) and family (e.g., abortion on demand, LBGTQ promotion, and schools preempting parental rights in child raising). It’s far more than toppled statues, profanity-laced graffiti, burned out neighborhoods, and changed school and sports team names. Woke’s constructivist roots have been growing for decades and folks would have to be blind or uneducated to not see how it parallels the underpinnings of Communism. Not to be paranoid, but Americans ought to be looking over their shoulders warily at China. For a sneak preview, folks need only consider California with its seemingly inexorable slide toward being the next Cuba or Venezuela.
As wokists and their liberal compatriots seek to divide the nation over cultural, political, racial, and gender lines, we dare not forget that our nation’s motto is E Pluribus Unum (out of many one) not Me Primum (me first). And we should take Benjamin Franklin’s warning to heart "a republic, if you can keep it." Indeed, our mettle is being tested by the small mob of well-funded, media-supported wokists in our midst. As to the wokists themselves, they’re arguably intellectual and cultural cowards.
What do we do about it? We stop appeasing the woke crowd; we challenge woke indoctrination in our colleges and K-12 schools by securing equal time for opposing views (cancel the cancellers); we stop dumbing down our education system in the name of "equity" (aka, lowest common denominator); we boycott the corporations caving to wokists; we express our opposing views through social media, op-eds, and letters to editors; we don’t feed the coffers of wokist universities by enrolling our children into their indoctrination echo chambers; we promote exceptionalism in resistance to a world of participation trophies; we seek office ourselves or elect legislators that stand firm for our rights as enumerated in the U.S. Constitution; and we support parents being in charge of their children rather than government-run schools.
Make no mistake, cancel culture will die if resisted and resist we must if we are to keep our republic. Folks need to be seriously questioning the heritage they are leaving for future generations.
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