I am not at war with those people. I am at war against the fucking idiotic things they seem to believe and say.

 

With that in mind.  If you can read this.  And if you really believe in the idea of free speech.  And if you really, truly believe in the marketplace of ideas.  You really need to believe in this, to be actually consistent, actually.

And there is the related idea of voting with your feet.  Essentially, the core of the modern, not really a thing, thing that gets called cancel culture. is both.    At minimum. the complainers are voting with their feet, if not their whole bodies, turning away from the people they are upset with.  And if the people doing and saying the upsetting things are making their living in a way that is very much tied to personal approval in the marketplace, like actors, celebrities, journalists, writers, politicians, and even sports figures?  The upset people are voting with their wallets, by boycotting the folk who upset them, and the horses they rode in on.  Sometimes shit is that simple.

Now I was thinking not to get personal in this post, but I am calling out John McWhorter, again.  Yeah.  He had every right to write his book filled with idiotic ideas.  And his publisher had/has every right to publish his book filled with idiotic ideas.  The market will ultimately decide the value of the book, in both the marketplace of ideas and of commerce.  But . . .

My opinion is this is a wasted opportunity.  Instead of being a knee jerk, cranky old (but not all that old) man.  Instead of using this opportunity to at least in many many cases, unfairly smear people who he disagrees with in tactics, at least, and in some cases I imagine what he believes they believe, at least.  (Not sorry to say it, but the psychological insight and mind reading ability of an English Professor are presumptively invalid, actually.)  He could have focused on the actually interesting questions.

What are the actually interesting questions?  I will tell you soon.  But first, an observation that isn't new, but sets up what I am leading to.  Ya know how they say that if you are going to punch at anyone as a comedian or even merely as a critic, you should punch up?  If you punch down you are just being a bully?  Ya heard that old bit before, I assume.  And let me mention, the punching down part is one of the main meta complaints the so called woke mob have.  They see, sometimes a little, sometimes greatly powerful people punching down, and they do not approve.  And they get all upset, and then they complain and boycott, and shit.

And now to the interesting questions.  And I confess.  I haven't read the full bit, but I have read some of the some of the essays that became part of his book.  And I have seen/heard him speak on these matters on various sho-grams and pods.  And I know,  in the end he chose to call his book, "Woke Racism."  So I think it is fair to assume  his main thesis is not the metal level . . . . at what point does a complaining mob become the bully? At what point is the reaction equal to greater a bad thing than the original thought/word/act crime?  Is there some kind of sliding scale, such as a POTUS is given a higher weight that has to be matched by the mob, than some virtually unheard of farm league outfielder?

But even if  McWhorter pays some small attention to the meta issues, he mostly is going after people he disagrees with on the tactical level, if not sometimes on the flat our content level.

Let me make another point, relying on some old bit of  wisdom.  So the other night.  I was at a dinner party.  And I mentioned the ancient line about how:

"Above the talk of plays and taxes, one hears the incessant grinding of axes."

Like I said in previous posts, there is nothing new under the sun.  Bitches be complaining about bitches, who complain about other bitches, complaining about other bitches.

Now I can be a very critical bitch myself.  I have no problem admitting that.  I also admit to being an O.G. Internet Troll.  I helped invent that shit, back in the day. But I wised up, and grew up, and gave up.  And I don't want to be too insulting to McWhorter.  But I truly believe he is spreading some really childish, silly ideas at best, in addition to engaging in some dead common axe grinding.  But hey.  The rest of us get to vote with our feet and wallets.  And buyer beware, he wants money from you to expose you to his axe grinding.  

I repeat.  The marketplaces will decide the value of his product, I mean axe grinding.  

And that is the way the world is fucking supposed to work.  Yea that!