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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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I mean, how would you even measure this? What would it take to say "okay the temperature is going in the right direction, thanks left", do you think you would be able to recognize it or is it purely a vibes check?

I legitimately haven't thought about this because I didn't actually think there was any way to stop it - I assumed it would just continue to get worse over time until there's an irreversible reduction in societal complexity (good luck cancelling someone whose job is stealing copper wiring from abandoned buildings). Any kind of positive steps in this direction would be extremely negative steps, personally, for anyone on the left who actually wanted to make them. Furthermore, it isn't actually like there's a central authority figure who could speak for the entire left and announce that the days of cancelling people are over - and even if there was, making that kind of announcement would doubtless cause them to lose all that influence and authority. Second, the trust required for such an announcement to be taken seriously or in good faith just isn't there, either. You'd have to come up with meaningful consequences for this kind of behaviour, along with a reliable and trustworthy enforcement body, because a system like this would absolutely get gamed the second it was implemented.

The only workable alternative that I can see would be legislation that mandates incredibly harsh penalties for the employers who actually fire people like this, but that has consequences and a lot of complications as well - a left-wing political group should absolutely be able to fire someone because they found out that he was actually a secret nazi doing his best to sabotage them from within.

Of course, my dream goal would be for the world to adopt my preferred political system (non-catholic environmentalist distributism), which would mean that cancellation can't really happen due to the altered structure of the economy. But that isn't going to happen anytime soon so it isn't really a realistic proposal.