I don’t think you’re a hypocrite any more than I think the left are hypocrites.
You formal, remember? Not you personally. Quirk of English is that there isn’t a separate word for 2nd person plural pronoun.
I get what you’re saying and very broad strokes I agree with you in part and in very broad generalities.
I just believe you have to weigh each instance on it’s own merits and not be so quick to cry cancel culture. Disney has not weighed in, so it’s all speculations anyway that that’s why she was fired. I even saw one article saying she was going to a spin off of her Mandelorian character. So how is she being “canceled” if she is being “fired" from one show only to continue the character in a spin-off? It also seems Disney protected her for some time, which suggests their move to dismiss isn’t related or related exclusively to her political views.
Further, the backlash to “Cancel Culture” has its own seedy side. It’s becoming the next Big Lie of the right after election fraud. No amount of public harranging can force a company to fire an employee and companies face costly consequences for wrongful termination. Just ask Catholic Healthcare West … $167 million settlement.
No matter how much individual people on the internet demand it, Disney can be sued for wrongful termination and violation of labor laws. The Tweets and other posts are simply far left exercise of free speech as much as far right Tweets mocking gender pronoun use. They have no force of law, they’re just more obnoxious opinions being spewed into the ether.
I do find the far right in America to be hypocrites on this issue because the left has been being barraged by far right and other extremist increasingly violent rhetoric for YEARS. When complaints or calls for moderation were made they were demeaned further as snowflakes and crybabies. They hid behind the First Amendment completely disregarding the good faith intent which is the foundation of the First Amendment.
Now they’re getting a taste of what they’ve been dishing out and they don’t like it. Centrists and Leftists respond, “yeah, what do you think we’ve been telling you??? You’re getting death threats? Wow. Welcome to Tuesday. You’ll get used to it eventually.”
It reminds me of one of Ruby Thewes' lines from Cold Mountain. “They call this war a cloud over the land. But they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say, 'Shit, it’s raining!’”
It was hubris on the part of the far right to think that the environment of increasingly aggressive digital community and media violence as entertainment they gleefully sowed and still enjoy would not boomerang back around on them too.
The absolute saddest aspect is that people should have enough self discipline, self respect, self control, and self awareness to edit themselves away from breaches of “polite discourse" in public space or apologize when they miss the mark.
As far as a cowed populace, maybe other nations. I don’t see that here, we’re on more violent roads right now than that. Besides, Americans are too rabble rousing, stubborn, and contrarian by nature for that to ever be likely.
