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It's a half-joke on your own terms, why should all of it's implications be taken seriously?
When that Home Depot lady got fired we were posed a question of whether right-wingers are here are going to decry it, now that it is their side doing it. My point is analogous to that, if that cancel culture question was valid, it is valid to ask left-wingers that didn't like these sorts of insults to decry them being made about Vance. Either that, or to explicitly endorse a free-for-all.
It's a free-for-all in any case. It's always been my point about cancel culture, too, that both the left and the right will do it if they have a chance, and have done it forever and ever, so it's useless to go "you started it, we're just responding!" and so on. The cycle cooling down either happens naturally or due to an external pressure, not by expecting either side just voluntarily and consciously give up and then expect the other to nobly do the same.
This only really makes sense if you assume there are only two sides. The eager willingness to play the "Republican talk radio" game ticked off people who needn't have been anything but friends.
Of course, it makes more sense if getting to hurt people is the point and the policy is just an excuse.
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