Saturday, March 19, 2022

Lenten Meditations Have Been Delayed For A Week, So We Bring You This Week's Rant, Already In Progress....

 So that NYT editorial (behind a paywall; even happier now I didn't pay for access to it) was worse than I thought.  This excerpt comes via Amanda Marcotte, with whom I don't always agree, but I do this time:

"However you define cancel culture, Americans know it exists, and feel its burden," they write. The best they can come up with is "fear of retaliation or harsh criticism." And even then, it's clear from the context that they're not talking about all harsh criticism or retaliation, just the kind that comes from assumed progressives. The polling they did on the question only asks if "sometimes you have shut down speech that is anti-democratic, bigoted or simply untrue." 

"Cancel culture" is as chimerical as "politically correct," a shibboleth that even Bill Maher finally dropped as the name for his show.  "Cancel culture" is not a thing, it's a label applied freely to stop people from thinking, the same way "politically correct" was used until it lost even the attenuated value of its coinage.  P.C. was invented as a mocking phrase to deride the concerns of liberals over how to use language.  It turned into a catch-all for any political position the user of the phrase didn't like, so long as that user was politically conservative and was using it to describe any political idea that wasn't politically conservative. 

Nice work if you can get it, and a lot of people let them get it.  For years.  "Cancel culture" is trying to fill the gap left by "politically correct."  To argue about how  there is no "cancel culture" is to do the empty phrase the service of saying it does describe something which could exist, and you've lost the battle before you've begun by conceding the premise you sought to deny.  "Cancel culture" is not real; it's not a thing; it's not a problem in America today.  If anything, the horror of what's going on in Ukraine, the naked agression of Russia, the plain desire of Putin to be the next Tsar of all the Russias (the 19th century is dead and buried; Putin's fundamental failure is to not recognize that, and all it entails about international relations in the still nascent 21st century), the almost absolute desire of the majority of the world to stand against this aggression (if Putin ever does use battlefield nukes, even China and India will be appalled.  There's always  room for growth in the anti-Russia international circle), should soon squash out even the juvenile cries about "cancel culture" and being mean to white people.

The clowns in D.C. driving their trucks inside the Beltway and honking their horns (which alone would make me tell 'em to "fuck off!") imagine, somehow, this is how political activism works.  They also imagine the people of D.C. should welcome them (as Putin expected the Ukrainians to welcome Russian soldiers?  Not a solid comparison, but the parallels are really eerie.  Kinda  like the parallels between Trump and Putin.), and are hurt and surprised that they haven't already gotten Congress to do what they want (do they even understand how Congress works?  What was the timeline between Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights Act?  9 years?  Idiots.).  They are being ignored because they haven't shut down D.C. (nor were they ever going to be allowed to.  Maybe Canadians are too polite.).  They haven't done anything, and suddenly, with Ukraine in danger and the Western world trying as hard as possible to act with one accord, nobody cares about whatever it is those truckers were upset about.

Of course, the reason the truck drivers thought the country (at least) should care, was Trump.  He's fading fast, too.  There's already reasoned speculation he won't be the only possible GOP nominee in 2024.  That's happened since Ukraine, too.

Ukraine is a watershed, the break point between past and future.  It was brought about mostly because Putin is determined to drag the past (the 19th century past) into the 21st century future.  Putin may fancy himself Stalin, but he doesn't have the iron control over his country that Stalin did; and he doesn't have the excuse of "reparations" (essentially) for the losses the Soviet Union suffered in defeating Hitler (it's really doubtful we could have done it without him; had Stalin and Hitler remained allies, the map of Europe would look very different today). Putin may want to be Stalin, but those conditions are gone and he can't recreate them.  More and more he reminds me of a comic book supervillain come to life; except supervillians can't come to life.  They are as impossible as superheroes.  Putin is finding that out as he grinds his army into dust while pounding Ukraine into the stone age.  Ukraine is betting they will last longer than Putin's starving troops, shitty equipment, or even armaments.  Missiles are not self-replenishing resource, and even China doesn’t want to put itself against the whole world and arm Russia with what it is using up. Putin's military adventure is living on borrowed time.  In the 19th century a man on horseback was still a formidable weapon against people armed with pitchforks. In the 20th century a tank was a rolling fortress against people with machine guns.  Ukrainians are being armed with Javelins, and taking out Russian tanks and even Russian jets.  Putin doesn't have the power Stalin had because Putin doesn't face the world Stalin faced.  It's pretty much that simple.

And in the face of that reality, and the very understandable and real concern Putin will find some field commander willing to nuke a location in Ukraine to prove Russia means business; or just the reality that Putin is going to fall and what does Russia do with that power vaccum (haven't we seen this movie before?), cries of “cancel culture" seem petty, and whiny, and self-indulgent.

Which is what they have always been.  In the face of real problems in the world that don't involve catastrophe on a slow roll to disaster (climate change, e.g.), invented problems suddenly seem...very invented.

It's like we aren't happy unless we've got something to bitch about.  Which, when I find the time next week, I'll try to remember to come back to; because I can connect nothing with nothing, and I can also connect that dilemma in modern American life to soteriology and why I think that's gone so perilously off-course for so much of American (at least) Christianity.

Yeah, we don't play on a small court around here.

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