The bit about how they come after the people plausibly associated with the previous regime next is gold. Yes. This. This is why I resigned from writing about politics. I was born at night, but not last night, and can see that step two of a right-wing-revenge movement is to come after people like me. I received upwards of 60 emails from other people who are also now closing their mouths about politics, both publicly and privately, for the same reason. The strategy is flawed, because it's got people who agree with the ideology of the people using it recognizing that it requires becoming something they're not willing to become. It's not unlike a conversation I had once with someone about porn. He and I agreed on its dangers and risks and it being an existential threat to the institution of marriage (since many, perhaps most, boys are now addicted to it and imprint on it years before dating is realistic). But outlawing it in a meaningful sense, an enforceable sense, would require giving the government power that I'm not willing to give the government. He was. That fundamental difference is what prevented me from joining his efforts. This decision, to brutalize someone who *agreed with* the other side, rather than who participated in the atrocities of the other side, is going to be the biggest mistake the right has ever made in the culture war because it's proven every overblown fear of the right to be not so overblown after all.
A second comment, split out besides it's truly an aside. One can use the revenge desire to accomplish a great deal that's positive with a little mental jujitsu.
I accidentally did this growing up. I was bullied and made fun of in 7th grade for being smart. So I vowed I was never going to let my peers forget I was smarter than them. I had to have the highest grades, test scores, etc. in the school and I worked hard to get them. Then I of course flaunted them. It wasn't until I was an adult decades out of school that I realized that my peers were too self-absorbed to really notice or care. My "revenge" didn't make them feel bad or stupid like I daydreamed. I was too much a typical teenager to realize that at the time.
Of course, working hard, studying, getting good grades, and excelling academically has some consequences all its own. Good consequences. I never paid tuition until I took a community college photography class in my late twenties (full ride scholarships for seven years, undergrad and grad). I also developed ferocious work habits that continued to serve me throughout my life.
I "got my revenge" through a well-lived life, all unconsciously.
And I've sometimes wondered if that path would be satisfying and effective if I had been more conscious about it or not.
Revenge is gasoline. I often wonder if we can put it in engines instead of throwing it on the fire.
Absolutely brilliant. And very true. I have found the same in my life--it makes spectacular fuel, the trick is to decouple it from the relational component. "I'll show them" works a lot better if the thing you're trying to show is so inherently satisfying that you wind up not carong if "they" notice or care.
You make a number of very good points. However, I think that the thrust of Carter’s argument is about establishing the rules of the game.
I keep thinking about how the common laws of war are formed and enforced. Despite what anyone says, the Haig has nothing to do with it. The common laws of war are enforced by reprisal. A reprisal is something that would normally be considered a war crime, that is made legal so long as it is proportionate to the crime committed by the original offender.
The law says that a surrendering enemy must be allowed to surrender. If you refuse to accept that surrender, yours will not be allowed. (If you take no prisoners, neither will your enemies.)
The law against using incendiary weapons on cities came about because both British and German cities were heavily bombarded with them.
Both sides used chemical weapons in the First World War. Neither side would permit the use of them in the second.
In essence, the laws of war develop as BOTH sides realize that they can be on the receiving end of what becomes a war crime. To date, the left has not yet truly recognized that they are also vulnerable to the tactics that they use.
It's a fair point and not without substantial merit. However, for several reasons, I still think what Carter is advocating is a very poor strategic move. A pertinent reason is this--the correct analogy is not incendiary weapons, it's quagmires and flytape strategies.
Spending one's energies--and especially the energies of one's footsoldiers--on volleys and counter-volleys of cancellations robs focus and resources from actually developing and advancing a leadership vision. It also ignores the fact that cancellation tactics only work against those who are on the margins and/or out of power. (I also discuss some of my other reasoning in my conversation with Herbert)
There are a few reasons for this--first, those who are in power and/or attached to the ruling class have the presumption of legitimacy and respectability working for them, at least among those who count. Those on the outside must work twice as hard for half as much credibility (this is always the case, not just in our current circumstances).
People who are in power and/or well-connected might experience a setback, but they won't experience ruin--this is why it is an asymmetric weapon. For evidence of this, one need look no further than the effect that such attempts had (or failed to have) on Bill Clinton in the 1990s, on GW Bush and Obama in the 2000s, etc.
It also misunderstands the nature of cancellation--it's not "street war between my gang and your gang," it's a destabilization strategy that requires considerable expenditure of energy by one's footsoldiers. Mob action is easy to whip up, and hard to control, and borderline impossible to redirect once it's firmly pointed in a given direction--it also either takes on a life of its own until it burns itself out, or it burns out quickly before it can take on that life.
Should those (of whatever political persuasion) who are outside the ruling clique get sucked into this fight, they're much more likely to lose than otherwise. Thus, I think the accurate analogy is not "The Nazis and the Allies traded incendiary bombs and then decided afterwards not to do that again--we outsiders should push for this kind of detente" but closer to thinking "The Nazis are air-dropping incendiary bombs, so fuck 'em I'm gonna use a Molotov cocktail."
An understandable impulse, but tactically foolish (or worse).
A further elaboration on establishing the rules is one simple fact of the Geneva Conventions. They are considered binding only between signatory nations or (and this is a later extension) signatory nations and non-signatory nations who "accepts and applies the provisions".
A huge part of the culture war as experienced the last decade as opposed to its 80-90s predecessor is there has long been no acceptance or application, even feigned, by one side (in all conflicts all sides flaunt the rules, but you gauge a side by how often and how openly)*
And it is in the context I read John Carter and something I think our host here misses. Caesar was magnanimous AFTER victory. The difference between 1919 and 1945 is not the leaders of the victors in the latter did not seek revenge during the war (support for the war in the US hinged on revenge for Pearl Harbor to a large degree) but because the moment hostilities ended they were determined that hostilities ended and at the very least detente ranged.
The question is in fights over cancel culture what constitutes the end of hostilities. How does one know when to signal "we have won so we must put down the sword and take up the tankard." And, yes, some degree of satiating of passions is a prelude to that time.**
* This leads into a discussion of why the demonization of hypocrisy as the worst possible sin is the stupidity damn tendency of our age).
** Versailles and all it wrought were an example of this. Had the Allies stuck it out for a spring offensive and entered Germany en mass passions would be sated and the lowers couldn't pretend they hadn't lost. The Allies decided, however, to be above victory while also deciding to take the spoils of victory, the worst possible combination.
I didn't miss that point about magnanimity--rather, since the war goes to the party who can most inspire trust, there are certain things that are self-defeating. Vindictiveness is right at the top.
Demanding someone under fire not shoot back is not seen as magnanimity but cowardice and at this instance that is where much of the right is at if only because it has festered for so long and so publicly.
Yes, but to not shoot at it he needs both the training to differentiate AND faith that someone is assigned the mission of suppressing flak or hardening his plane against it.
Right now on the right the only consistent refrain has been "we're above that" and "that's not who we are". The planes are sent over flak while being told suppressing flak is something they're above.
So, the squadron leader who tells them to go after the flak guns first instead of their primary target will be the one with trust. You could argue that is the rise of Donald Trump in a nutshell.
I had a longer comment on the main post that touched this but Substack ate it. Recreating in vim and then I'll post it.
I completely agree that "we're above that" is the wrong answer to cancel culture. Back when it started, the freethinking left said shit like that, but it fell on deaf ears because the people who started it wanted revenge themselves. Aspirational visions of the "goodness" of your side are impotent in the face of vengeful rage and frustrated ambition.
But nobody at the time pointed out the most relevant factor:
"Doing this throws the game."
And so it has done. Unfortunately, instead of just throwing the game, they also may have drawn their adversaries into an actual honest-to-god revenge feud, which makes it less "you win because I cut my own head off" and more "If I can't win, I'll trick you into making sure nobody can win and we'll burn it all down together."
I wrote this hope hoping that it might catch some of the right ears and help prevent that from happening.
Won't comment on the Trump angle--my thoughts on the matter are complicated and transitory.
But, yes, this part of your comment is exactly the point I was attempting to make:
"So, the squadron leader who tells them to go after the flak guns first instead of their primary target will be the one with trust."
Your words here have been on my mind, particularly about magnanimity. If I could give Trump one piece of advice and force him to follow it, it would be to have perfect message discipline. He should never refer to her as anything other than "Border Czar Harris". It's the border, stupid! But if I could give him one other, it would be to pay Home Depot Lady's rent or mortgage for six months and let her look for another job. That would say, "I have principles. I meant what I said about stopping cancel culture, and I am a grown-ass man who can fight his own battles. I do not want my fans to go around terrorizing grandmothers for hating me. I'm not a punk, I'm a leader." Thoughts?
I’m voting for him if I vote at all (90% chance I will at this point), but if he did that I would raise money and don a MAGA hat, ISTG. It would also make him look like the most principled politician we've seen in years, and the assassination attempt gives him a growth narrative that's totally plausible.
In reading this and some other substack selections on leadership the idea of discernment keeps popping up in my head. John Wooden was said to have told his players, " Iwill love you all and give you my best, but we won't all get along the same and I won't treat you the same, because you're not (something along those lines). Beaurocracies seem to be set up specifically to route out those who might be trusted to make judgments on anything with nuance. The proposal that Title IX should do away with due process for accused students comes to mind.
Yeah. The utility of bureaucracy is that it allows for the extension of executive/sovereign power through a machine-like apparatus. As such, people who are capable of independent and disruptive thought often prove a liability to the rationale of the machine. The long-term effect is that the more mature a bureaucracy, the more it selects for a certain flavor of incompetence/automata-type quality.
The end-result is the morphing of the administrative apparatus into a one-size-fits-all scheme, as allowing for more than one size requires the system to be able to tolerate flexible thinking, which, in its final sclerotic stages, it cannot do.
First, I do think you are missing the point on magnanimity. Adopting it too early or too easily while the fight is still on is a way to lose trust and not regain it. In American politics the classic is Jack Kemp thanking Al Gore for acknowledging Kemp wasn’t a racist when what Gore essentially said, “I know you’re not a racist like most Republicans”* Kemp lost a lot of trust among the right that night with just that one moment of premature magnanimity.
To gain trust a leader must demonstrate to the people he is leading that he is the way away from their problems (he must “feel their pain”.**) You cannot have an intervention with a drunk friend unless you acknowledge the problems he is facing. Once you do that you have the opening to make him face the root of many is his drinking and those that aren’t are at best not permentantly alieviated and at worst are exacerbated by them.
And that acknowledgement leads me to my second counter, because it is a trust breaking idea.
You have two ideas that conflict in a key way:
| it’s worth noticing that all of it has been conducted by those who have no talent, accomplishment,
| prestige, or what we might trivializingly call “merit,” against those who do.
And, just before that,
| People who are in charge don’t use it. Instead, people use it when they want to
| punish the powerful but they’re too weak to actually fight them. People who
|are nominally in power, but not in charge, will use it in order to forestall being
|deposed. “
It is a very hard sell that people who engage in cancelling lack power. I’m going to use a specific example for two reasons. One, the victim has done a well setout post explaining what happened+ and two, I suspect you’re at least aware of the inciting incident.
Now, you will say to me Larry survived all those cancelling and is NYT bestselling author and millionaire from his writing.
That is all true.
It’s also true they got multiple newspapers and magazines including The Guardian and Entertainment Weekly to run stories on his istophobia.
It is also true that he cashes options checks from Hollywood knowing instead of the project going forward someone will point out he’s evil and it will die.
It’s also true cancellers complained enough about him being the main draw in a charity anthology that he was removed spreading collateral damage to the charity by not only not getting his fans to buy but probably to encourage others not to buy.
It’s also true those major media stories and rumor mills painted him as a monster to the point people his wife knew in high school (and had not really talked to since) called asking if she needed help getting out from under his abuse.
I don’t care how many NYT best sellers you have that disruption to your life is painful and it is spreading it to others whose only crime is marrying who they loved (which I swear was a rallying cry in recent memory) or wanting to raise money for charity.
That is also not the result of people who lack power.
I picked Larry because he’s someone who came through with a life a lot of us would envy (even you in parts I suspect...not just book reach but that mountain fastness he’s built). And yet he paid a price.
Tell the right of center victims with lives equivalent to Home Depot lady they were attacked by people without power. Tell them Home Depot lady and her ilk don’t have cultural power and authority or at least didn't until a bullet almost set off a hot civil war and enough people said “I’m sick of this shit”.
Because that’s what a leader who is going to be magnanimous at this stage has to do.
Which leads to my final question: where is such a leader? I can’t really see one on the right and even if one arises without a counterpart on the left who is willing to say “knock this shit out” and enforce it that leader on the right won’t last if he tries to call off the dogs.
You’re right in that people want hope. But hope requires a belief this shit will end. Right now leaders on the right are either silent or continuing the “this is not who we are” and “we must not sink to their level”.
No one wants to acknowledge that while we’d all like no boots on faces if forced to choose between my boot on your face and your boot on my face I’m picking the former every single time.
So I think the hope of John Carter and others^ is a few Home Depot ladies will get three things:
1. Saiting the need for revenge that has built up and is already boiling over.
2. Convincing the people who would join a cancel mob back in June will tell the next person to whip one up to fuck off.
3. Give space to leaders left and right to say “knock it off, we’re done” and “knock it off, they know now.” respectively.
But a leader who tells the right “cancellers have no power and we need to be magnanimous to them” while the attempts are still going on is a failure before they start.
And now, I’m late to fighter practice because of you :P
^ Not me.Y ou know I think we’ve let it fester to the point the final outcome will be the end liquidation of one side until the survivors cower in fear. It will be done, as you put it, by people who think it is necessary and will worry about what that means from those who carried it out later. And regardless of who wins that means at best I’m dead and at worst burying people I love.
I assume you're talking about Larry Correia. Yeah, he's dong fine, and his situation is a perfect example of those without real power and/or who sense their prestige under threat trying to cancel someone who has both.
I said that cancellations are revenge by those without "merit" upon those who have it--I also said that when the tactic is employed by people in power, it is only because they are sensing that they are no longer in charge. This is straight out of Thucydides--most wars, and especially civil wars, are started by the side who is most afraid of losing an ongoing power struggle. The important consideration is not "person X has more power than person Y" where X is the canceller in power, but "person X senses that his power is slipping away and person Y is in a position to take it".
---
"But a leader who tells the right “cancellers have no power and we need to be magnanimous to them” while the attempts are still going on is a failure before they start."
Jack Kemp was not magnanimous. He was polite in a way that telegraphed approval-seeking. He was *nice.* Had he been magnanimous in that circumstance, he'd have said something to the effect of "I'm pleased to see that you're in danger of achieving enlightenment, Al. Keep it up, you'll be on my side of the stage soon!"
Saying "thank you" to your opponent recognizing that you're *not* horrible is not magnanimity at all. It's weakness, a trait Kemp was filled with despite also being quite an articulate and thoughtful fellow.
----
There is also the question of asymmetry. If cancellation worked on the sitting regime clique, then the leader of BLM would not *still* be raking in the cash despite having been exposed for embezzling donations. Shame is a social emotion, and the entire mechanism of cancellation depends upon those in the target's social circle finding a given behavior shameful. The ruling regime, insulated by ingroup-morality, does not have a shame reflex that is intelligible to those in the outgroup. It will protect its own who it does not consider expendable, and will happily give the rest up for sacrifice (this was all laid out by Marcues, many moons ago).
Pointing out to a Creationist that Genesis is transparently mythic and that *every single piece of evidence* from geology, physics, astrophysics, and palentology patently contradicts it at every turn does not sway the creationist from his mission--it instead induces psychological reactance, whereby his resolve is stiffened and he becomes *less* open to persuasion or wooing.
For the same reason, counter-cancelling the Home Depot lady and others that the ruling clique deems expendable doesn't knock footsoldiers out of the enemy ranks, it just convinces them that they're not going to get a better deal from those opposed to the current ruling clique.
The current ruling clique started losing legitimacy when it encouraged and suborned the rise of the cancel mobs. Those opposed to this clique are ginning themselves up to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
I was in fact talking about Larry because I think he's a best case outcome.
On the worst case side of the ledger Ed Piskor is dead after the cancel mob continued until they shredded his already meger (as is for for many artists) social network via shame and genuine threats of locking them out of their current industry (principally his partner at Cartoon Kayfabe).
As for Kemp, I see your point but that is what has been sold as magnanimous on the right by all the heirs to Buckley and Goldwater (neither of whom would have behaved that way IMHO).
Someone who answers as you suggested would have a huge audience or would have 8 years. One of the biggest reason I heard people jumping on the Trump wagon: "We can't spare him; he fights." to quote paraphrase your "favorite" president which most of them did.
Perhaps that is where we are at loggerheads. I, and many like me even more than me, want a leader who fights, who says this will not be tolerated, and who says that people who do this are in the wrong. Right now we have silence and acquencence which in the long run is surrender.
People knowing both the fight is lost and no quarter will be given (this leads into a side track on the left destroying the symbols of reconciliation of the last Civil War while working to kick a new one off) often decide to take as many bastards, in this case Home Depot Ladies, as possible. Just saying to them "you'll lose if you do" isn't going to cut it. They know they are going to lose already. They just don't want to die alone.
That sentiment and the fact that unlike you I don't see at least 20 people buying to offer real, broadbased hope is a big reason I see our future looking more like the Wars of Religion in Europe (because that is what they will be) than leaders arising who walk us back from the brink.
The fight *begins* when enough people get fed up enough. New leaders emerge *after* that point. History unfolds a lot more slowly in real-time than it appears to in retrospect. It's maddening to live through, I get it, but that's how the world unfortunately works. After having watched the fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of the Internet, and several other world-historical shifts in my own lifetime, I'm most startled by how *gradual* they all were.
There are several major historical inflection points coming. Everyone can feel it, left, right, center, and off in the boonies. But nobody knows exactly when they'll come, or what will bring them about. One thing I am dead certain of, though--such moments *create* the leaders that step into the role. Those movements that, in response to their dissatisfaction, cultivate strategic savvy and impressive character wind up with better leaders and longer legacies than do movements that merely further stoke their own vengeance and resentment.
| History unfolds a lot more slowly in real-time than it appears to in retrospect.
If there is one single benefit above all others that watching World War 2 in real-time on YouTube has brought home is this fact.
While I learned little details there have been no big revelations to me in the series.
But the time from the launch of Fall of France to the Fall of Crete or the step off from Barbarossa to the Battle of Moscow or from Pearl to Midway was maddening when following it week by week, not page by page has been eye-opening.
And as impatient I am with change now, it was much worse four years ago.
If anyone reading this did not follow that I recommend starting this month with their "The Great War" or "WW2 in RT" in September or their newly started Korean War series (only 3 weeks in so you'll get most of the effect) I recommend that. I'm still re-calibrating how I read history.
Time will tell. There's at least 20 vying for that kind of position right now in public where I can see them--there are probably hundreds of more hidden behind institutional walls.
Part of what's interesting to me is that some of the people I talk to on the Woke side of the fence are also motivated by revenge. They (usually female and/or queer) want to lash back at those they feel have mistreated them and finally have some ways of doing do, however, ineffectual those ways might actually be. I find it interesting how many supposedly "cancelled" people show right back up again a few months or years later. It's a feel-good social signaling tactic that is less effective than many believe.
However, that aside, you solution is dead on. We need leadership and there's a strong craving for it. Some of us will have to step up to it, endure the attempts by the mediocre power holders to destroy us, and show the way. I don't see that at the national level these days, alas...
Yup. There is a lot of revenge-lust going around, and quite a good deal of it is well-founded, and it has been well-stoked on both sides by opportunists who have studied Alinsky and taken his lessons to heart, mistaking "taking power" with being fit to rule
In terms of bounce-back, the higher up one goes, the easier it is to bounce back. As you move to people who are less well-connected, you begin to find a greater percentage of people who are actually ruined by the experience, or who take many years to bounce back.
I've played it both ways in my life. One, revenge is not as satisfying as one might think and can truly mess with your head. Two, it's so much more satisfying to smile and be gracious in a Southern way. If it were me and the Home Depot lady, I would have done something like this: "I saw your post about the assassination attempt. I'm sorry you feel that way. Your life must be pretty hard and miserable to think that way. I hope it gets better." Smile. Wink. Leave. No need to get angry, no need to get her fired. You're happy. She isn't. The end.
The bit about how they come after the people plausibly associated with the previous regime next is gold. Yes. This. This is why I resigned from writing about politics. I was born at night, but not last night, and can see that step two of a right-wing-revenge movement is to come after people like me. I received upwards of 60 emails from other people who are also now closing their mouths about politics, both publicly and privately, for the same reason. The strategy is flawed, because it's got people who agree with the ideology of the people using it recognizing that it requires becoming something they're not willing to become. It's not unlike a conversation I had once with someone about porn. He and I agreed on its dangers and risks and it being an existential threat to the institution of marriage (since many, perhaps most, boys are now addicted to it and imprint on it years before dating is realistic). But outlawing it in a meaningful sense, an enforceable sense, would require giving the government power that I'm not willing to give the government. He was. That fundamental difference is what prevented me from joining his efforts. This decision, to brutalize someone who *agreed with* the other side, rather than who participated in the atrocities of the other side, is going to be the biggest mistake the right has ever made in the culture war because it's proven every overblown fear of the right to be not so overblown after all.
Yup
A second comment, split out besides it's truly an aside. One can use the revenge desire to accomplish a great deal that's positive with a little mental jujitsu.
I accidentally did this growing up. I was bullied and made fun of in 7th grade for being smart. So I vowed I was never going to let my peers forget I was smarter than them. I had to have the highest grades, test scores, etc. in the school and I worked hard to get them. Then I of course flaunted them. It wasn't until I was an adult decades out of school that I realized that my peers were too self-absorbed to really notice or care. My "revenge" didn't make them feel bad or stupid like I daydreamed. I was too much a typical teenager to realize that at the time.
Of course, working hard, studying, getting good grades, and excelling academically has some consequences all its own. Good consequences. I never paid tuition until I took a community college photography class in my late twenties (full ride scholarships for seven years, undergrad and grad). I also developed ferocious work habits that continued to serve me throughout my life.
I "got my revenge" through a well-lived life, all unconsciously.
And I've sometimes wondered if that path would be satisfying and effective if I had been more conscious about it or not.
Revenge is gasoline. I often wonder if we can put it in engines instead of throwing it on the fire.
Absolutely brilliant. And very true. I have found the same in my life--it makes spectacular fuel, the trick is to decouple it from the relational component. "I'll show them" works a lot better if the thing you're trying to show is so inherently satisfying that you wind up not carong if "they" notice or care.
You make a number of very good points. However, I think that the thrust of Carter’s argument is about establishing the rules of the game.
I keep thinking about how the common laws of war are formed and enforced. Despite what anyone says, the Haig has nothing to do with it. The common laws of war are enforced by reprisal. A reprisal is something that would normally be considered a war crime, that is made legal so long as it is proportionate to the crime committed by the original offender.
The law says that a surrendering enemy must be allowed to surrender. If you refuse to accept that surrender, yours will not be allowed. (If you take no prisoners, neither will your enemies.)
The law against using incendiary weapons on cities came about because both British and German cities were heavily bombarded with them.
Both sides used chemical weapons in the First World War. Neither side would permit the use of them in the second.
In essence, the laws of war develop as BOTH sides realize that they can be on the receiving end of what becomes a war crime. To date, the left has not yet truly recognized that they are also vulnerable to the tactics that they use.
It's a fair point and not without substantial merit. However, for several reasons, I still think what Carter is advocating is a very poor strategic move. A pertinent reason is this--the correct analogy is not incendiary weapons, it's quagmires and flytape strategies.
Spending one's energies--and especially the energies of one's footsoldiers--on volleys and counter-volleys of cancellations robs focus and resources from actually developing and advancing a leadership vision. It also ignores the fact that cancellation tactics only work against those who are on the margins and/or out of power. (I also discuss some of my other reasoning in my conversation with Herbert)
There are a few reasons for this--first, those who are in power and/or attached to the ruling class have the presumption of legitimacy and respectability working for them, at least among those who count. Those on the outside must work twice as hard for half as much credibility (this is always the case, not just in our current circumstances).
People who are in power and/or well-connected might experience a setback, but they won't experience ruin--this is why it is an asymmetric weapon. For evidence of this, one need look no further than the effect that such attempts had (or failed to have) on Bill Clinton in the 1990s, on GW Bush and Obama in the 2000s, etc.
It also misunderstands the nature of cancellation--it's not "street war between my gang and your gang," it's a destabilization strategy that requires considerable expenditure of energy by one's footsoldiers. Mob action is easy to whip up, and hard to control, and borderline impossible to redirect once it's firmly pointed in a given direction--it also either takes on a life of its own until it burns itself out, or it burns out quickly before it can take on that life.
Should those (of whatever political persuasion) who are outside the ruling clique get sucked into this fight, they're much more likely to lose than otherwise. Thus, I think the accurate analogy is not "The Nazis and the Allies traded incendiary bombs and then decided afterwards not to do that again--we outsiders should push for this kind of detente" but closer to thinking "The Nazis are air-dropping incendiary bombs, so fuck 'em I'm gonna use a Molotov cocktail."
An understandable impulse, but tactically foolish (or worse).
A further elaboration on establishing the rules is one simple fact of the Geneva Conventions. They are considered binding only between signatory nations or (and this is a later extension) signatory nations and non-signatory nations who "accepts and applies the provisions".
A huge part of the culture war as experienced the last decade as opposed to its 80-90s predecessor is there has long been no acceptance or application, even feigned, by one side (in all conflicts all sides flaunt the rules, but you gauge a side by how often and how openly)*
And it is in the context I read John Carter and something I think our host here misses. Caesar was magnanimous AFTER victory. The difference between 1919 and 1945 is not the leaders of the victors in the latter did not seek revenge during the war (support for the war in the US hinged on revenge for Pearl Harbor to a large degree) but because the moment hostilities ended they were determined that hostilities ended and at the very least detente ranged.
The question is in fights over cancel culture what constitutes the end of hostilities. How does one know when to signal "we have won so we must put down the sword and take up the tankard." And, yes, some degree of satiating of passions is a prelude to that time.**
* This leads into a discussion of why the demonization of hypocrisy as the worst possible sin is the stupidity damn tendency of our age).
** Versailles and all it wrought were an example of this. Had the Allies stuck it out for a spring offensive and entered Germany en mass passions would be sated and the lowers couldn't pretend they hadn't lost. The Allies decided, however, to be above victory while also deciding to take the spoils of victory, the worst possible combination.
I didn't miss that point about magnanimity--rather, since the war goes to the party who can most inspire trust, there are certain things that are self-defeating. Vindictiveness is right at the top.
Demanding someone under fire not shoot back is not seen as magnanimity but cowardice and at this instance that is where much of the right is at if only because it has festered for so long and so publicly.
On the other hand, the pilot who shoots at flak, mistaking it for the guns firing it, will quickly crash and burn.
Yes, but to not shoot at it he needs both the training to differentiate AND faith that someone is assigned the mission of suppressing flak or hardening his plane against it.
Right now on the right the only consistent refrain has been "we're above that" and "that's not who we are". The planes are sent over flak while being told suppressing flak is something they're above.
So, the squadron leader who tells them to go after the flak guns first instead of their primary target will be the one with trust. You could argue that is the rise of Donald Trump in a nutshell.
I had a longer comment on the main post that touched this but Substack ate it. Recreating in vim and then I'll post it.
I completely agree that "we're above that" is the wrong answer to cancel culture. Back when it started, the freethinking left said shit like that, but it fell on deaf ears because the people who started it wanted revenge themselves. Aspirational visions of the "goodness" of your side are impotent in the face of vengeful rage and frustrated ambition.
But nobody at the time pointed out the most relevant factor:
"Doing this throws the game."
And so it has done. Unfortunately, instead of just throwing the game, they also may have drawn their adversaries into an actual honest-to-god revenge feud, which makes it less "you win because I cut my own head off" and more "If I can't win, I'll trick you into making sure nobody can win and we'll burn it all down together."
I wrote this hope hoping that it might catch some of the right ears and help prevent that from happening.
Won't comment on the Trump angle--my thoughts on the matter are complicated and transitory.
But, yes, this part of your comment is exactly the point I was attempting to make:
"So, the squadron leader who tells them to go after the flak guns first instead of their primary target will be the one with trust."
Your words here have been on my mind, particularly about magnanimity. If I could give Trump one piece of advice and force him to follow it, it would be to have perfect message discipline. He should never refer to her as anything other than "Border Czar Harris". It's the border, stupid! But if I could give him one other, it would be to pay Home Depot Lady's rent or mortgage for six months and let her look for another job. That would say, "I have principles. I meant what I said about stopping cancel culture, and I am a grown-ass man who can fight his own battles. I do not want my fans to go around terrorizing grandmothers for hating me. I'm not a punk, I'm a leader." Thoughts?
That would be seriously impressive, not just from him specifically, but when measured against our political class in general.
I’m voting for him if I vote at all (90% chance I will at this point), but if he did that I would raise money and don a MAGA hat, ISTG. It would also make him look like the most principled politician we've seen in years, and the assassination attempt gives him a growth narrative that's totally plausible.
You would make bank as a political messaging strategist
In reading this and some other substack selections on leadership the idea of discernment keeps popping up in my head. John Wooden was said to have told his players, " Iwill love you all and give you my best, but we won't all get along the same and I won't treat you the same, because you're not (something along those lines). Beaurocracies seem to be set up specifically to route out those who might be trusted to make judgments on anything with nuance. The proposal that Title IX should do away with due process for accused students comes to mind.
Yeah. The utility of bureaucracy is that it allows for the extension of executive/sovereign power through a machine-like apparatus. As such, people who are capable of independent and disruptive thought often prove a liability to the rationale of the machine. The long-term effect is that the more mature a bureaucracy, the more it selects for a certain flavor of incompetence/automata-type quality.
The end-result is the morphing of the administrative apparatus into a one-size-fits-all scheme, as allowing for more than one size requires the system to be able to tolerate flexible thinking, which, in its final sclerotic stages, it cannot do.
Some notes or a short article on some " come in and save the sinking ship" CEOs might he interesting. Lou Gerstner, James Gaunt etc.
So, I have two counters and one question.
First, I do think you are missing the point on magnanimity. Adopting it too early or too easily while the fight is still on is a way to lose trust and not regain it. In American politics the classic is Jack Kemp thanking Al Gore for acknowledging Kemp wasn’t a racist when what Gore essentially said, “I know you’re not a racist like most Republicans”* Kemp lost a lot of trust among the right that night with just that one moment of premature magnanimity.
To gain trust a leader must demonstrate to the people he is leading that he is the way away from their problems (he must “feel their pain”.**) You cannot have an intervention with a drunk friend unless you acknowledge the problems he is facing. Once you do that you have the opening to make him face the root of many is his drinking and those that aren’t are at best not permentantly alieviated and at worst are exacerbated by them.
And that acknowledgement leads me to my second counter, because it is a trust breaking idea.
You have two ideas that conflict in a key way:
| it’s worth noticing that all of it has been conducted by those who have no talent, accomplishment,
| prestige, or what we might trivializingly call “merit,” against those who do.
And, just before that,
| People who are in charge don’t use it. Instead, people use it when they want to
| punish the powerful but they’re too weak to actually fight them. People who
|are nominally in power, but not in charge, will use it in order to forestall being
|deposed. “
It is a very hard sell that people who engage in cancelling lack power. I’m going to use a specific example for two reasons. One, the victim has done a well setout post explaining what happened+ and two, I suspect you’re at least aware of the inciting incident.
Now, you will say to me Larry survived all those cancelling and is NYT bestselling author and millionaire from his writing.
That is all true.
It’s also true they got multiple newspapers and magazines including The Guardian and Entertainment Weekly to run stories on his istophobia.
It is also true that he cashes options checks from Hollywood knowing instead of the project going forward someone will point out he’s evil and it will die.
It’s also true cancellers complained enough about him being the main draw in a charity anthology that he was removed spreading collateral damage to the charity by not only not getting his fans to buy but probably to encourage others not to buy.
It’s also true those major media stories and rumor mills painted him as a monster to the point people his wife knew in high school (and had not really talked to since) called asking if she needed help getting out from under his abuse.
I don’t care how many NYT best sellers you have that disruption to your life is painful and it is spreading it to others whose only crime is marrying who they loved (which I swear was a rallying cry in recent memory) or wanting to raise money for charity.
That is also not the result of people who lack power.
I picked Larry because he’s someone who came through with a life a lot of us would envy (even you in parts I suspect...not just book reach but that mountain fastness he’s built). And yet he paid a price.
Tell the right of center victims with lives equivalent to Home Depot lady they were attacked by people without power. Tell them Home Depot lady and her ilk don’t have cultural power and authority or at least didn't until a bullet almost set off a hot civil war and enough people said “I’m sick of this shit”.
Because that’s what a leader who is going to be magnanimous at this stage has to do.
Which leads to my final question: where is such a leader? I can’t really see one on the right and even if one arises without a counterpart on the left who is willing to say “knock this shit out” and enforce it that leader on the right won’t last if he tries to call off the dogs.
You’re right in that people want hope. But hope requires a belief this shit will end. Right now leaders on the right are either silent or continuing the “this is not who we are” and “we must not sink to their level”.
No one wants to acknowledge that while we’d all like no boots on faces if forced to choose between my boot on your face and your boot on my face I’m picking the former every single time.
So I think the hope of John Carter and others^ is a few Home Depot ladies will get three things:
1. Saiting the need for revenge that has built up and is already boiling over.
2. Convincing the people who would join a cancel mob back in June will tell the next person to whip one up to fuck off.
3. Give space to leaders left and right to say “knock it off, we’re done” and “knock it off, they know now.” respectively.
But a leader who tells the right “cancellers have no power and we need to be magnanimous to them” while the attempts are still going on is a failure before they start.
And now, I’m late to fighter practice because of you :P
* https://www.debates.org/voter-education/debate-transcripts/october-9-1996-debate-transcript/. Search for “Well, I thank you, Al” and read Gore’s statement prior and Kemp’s response.
** While mocked for it, and in terms of lack of action based on it deservedly so, Clinton was spot on with that turn of phrase.
+ https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1814314389224448362.html
^ Not me.Y ou know I think we’ve let it fester to the point the final outcome will be the end liquidation of one side until the survivors cower in fear. It will be done, as you put it, by people who think it is necessary and will worry about what that means from those who carried it out later. And regardless of who wins that means at best I’m dead and at worst burying people I love.
I assume you're talking about Larry Correia. Yeah, he's dong fine, and his situation is a perfect example of those without real power and/or who sense their prestige under threat trying to cancel someone who has both.
I said that cancellations are revenge by those without "merit" upon those who have it--I also said that when the tactic is employed by people in power, it is only because they are sensing that they are no longer in charge. This is straight out of Thucydides--most wars, and especially civil wars, are started by the side who is most afraid of losing an ongoing power struggle. The important consideration is not "person X has more power than person Y" where X is the canceller in power, but "person X senses that his power is slipping away and person Y is in a position to take it".
---
"But a leader who tells the right “cancellers have no power and we need to be magnanimous to them” while the attempts are still going on is a failure before they start."
Jack Kemp was not magnanimous. He was polite in a way that telegraphed approval-seeking. He was *nice.* Had he been magnanimous in that circumstance, he'd have said something to the effect of "I'm pleased to see that you're in danger of achieving enlightenment, Al. Keep it up, you'll be on my side of the stage soon!"
Saying "thank you" to your opponent recognizing that you're *not* horrible is not magnanimity at all. It's weakness, a trait Kemp was filled with despite also being quite an articulate and thoughtful fellow.
----
There is also the question of asymmetry. If cancellation worked on the sitting regime clique, then the leader of BLM would not *still* be raking in the cash despite having been exposed for embezzling donations. Shame is a social emotion, and the entire mechanism of cancellation depends upon those in the target's social circle finding a given behavior shameful. The ruling regime, insulated by ingroup-morality, does not have a shame reflex that is intelligible to those in the outgroup. It will protect its own who it does not consider expendable, and will happily give the rest up for sacrifice (this was all laid out by Marcues, many moons ago).
Pointing out to a Creationist that Genesis is transparently mythic and that *every single piece of evidence* from geology, physics, astrophysics, and palentology patently contradicts it at every turn does not sway the creationist from his mission--it instead induces psychological reactance, whereby his resolve is stiffened and he becomes *less* open to persuasion or wooing.
For the same reason, counter-cancelling the Home Depot lady and others that the ruling clique deems expendable doesn't knock footsoldiers out of the enemy ranks, it just convinces them that they're not going to get a better deal from those opposed to the current ruling clique.
The current ruling clique started losing legitimacy when it encouraged and suborned the rise of the cancel mobs. Those opposed to this clique are ginning themselves up to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
I was in fact talking about Larry because I think he's a best case outcome.
On the worst case side of the ledger Ed Piskor is dead after the cancel mob continued until they shredded his already meger (as is for for many artists) social network via shame and genuine threats of locking them out of their current industry (principally his partner at Cartoon Kayfabe).
As for Kemp, I see your point but that is what has been sold as magnanimous on the right by all the heirs to Buckley and Goldwater (neither of whom would have behaved that way IMHO).
Someone who answers as you suggested would have a huge audience or would have 8 years. One of the biggest reason I heard people jumping on the Trump wagon: "We can't spare him; he fights." to quote paraphrase your "favorite" president which most of them did.
Perhaps that is where we are at loggerheads. I, and many like me even more than me, want a leader who fights, who says this will not be tolerated, and who says that people who do this are in the wrong. Right now we have silence and acquencence which in the long run is surrender.
People knowing both the fight is lost and no quarter will be given (this leads into a side track on the left destroying the symbols of reconciliation of the last Civil War while working to kick a new one off) often decide to take as many bastards, in this case Home Depot Ladies, as possible. Just saying to them "you'll lose if you do" isn't going to cut it. They know they are going to lose already. They just don't want to die alone.
That sentiment and the fact that unlike you I don't see at least 20 people buying to offer real, broadbased hope is a big reason I see our future looking more like the Wars of Religion in Europe (because that is what they will be) than leaders arising who walk us back from the brink.
It all makes sense.
All I have to say in response is:
The fight *begins* when enough people get fed up enough. New leaders emerge *after* that point. History unfolds a lot more slowly in real-time than it appears to in retrospect. It's maddening to live through, I get it, but that's how the world unfortunately works. After having watched the fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of the Internet, and several other world-historical shifts in my own lifetime, I'm most startled by how *gradual* they all were.
There are several major historical inflection points coming. Everyone can feel it, left, right, center, and off in the boonies. But nobody knows exactly when they'll come, or what will bring them about. One thing I am dead certain of, though--such moments *create* the leaders that step into the role. Those movements that, in response to their dissatisfaction, cultivate strategic savvy and impressive character wind up with better leaders and longer legacies than do movements that merely further stoke their own vengeance and resentment.
| History unfolds a lot more slowly in real-time than it appears to in retrospect.
If there is one single benefit above all others that watching World War 2 in real-time on YouTube has brought home is this fact.
While I learned little details there have been no big revelations to me in the series.
But the time from the launch of Fall of France to the Fall of Crete or the step off from Barbarossa to the Battle of Moscow or from Pearl to Midway was maddening when following it week by week, not page by page has been eye-opening.
And as impatient I am with change now, it was much worse four years ago.
If anyone reading this did not follow that I recommend starting this month with their "The Great War" or "WW2 in RT" in September or their newly started Korean War series (only 3 weeks in so you'll get most of the effect) I recommend that. I'm still re-calibrating how I read history.
"Where is such a leader?"
Time will tell. There's at least 20 vying for that kind of position right now in public where I can see them--there are probably hundreds of more hidden behind institutional walls.
Part of what's interesting to me is that some of the people I talk to on the Woke side of the fence are also motivated by revenge. They (usually female and/or queer) want to lash back at those they feel have mistreated them and finally have some ways of doing do, however, ineffectual those ways might actually be. I find it interesting how many supposedly "cancelled" people show right back up again a few months or years later. It's a feel-good social signaling tactic that is less effective than many believe.
However, that aside, you solution is dead on. We need leadership and there's a strong craving for it. Some of us will have to step up to it, endure the attempts by the mediocre power holders to destroy us, and show the way. I don't see that at the national level these days, alas...
Yup. There is a lot of revenge-lust going around, and quite a good deal of it is well-founded, and it has been well-stoked on both sides by opportunists who have studied Alinsky and taken his lessons to heart, mistaking "taking power" with being fit to rule
In terms of bounce-back, the higher up one goes, the easier it is to bounce back. As you move to people who are less well-connected, you begin to find a greater percentage of people who are actually ruined by the experience, or who take many years to bounce back.
I've played it both ways in my life. One, revenge is not as satisfying as one might think and can truly mess with your head. Two, it's so much more satisfying to smile and be gracious in a Southern way. If it were me and the Home Depot lady, I would have done something like this: "I saw your post about the assassination attempt. I'm sorry you feel that way. Your life must be pretty hard and miserable to think that way. I hope it gets better." Smile. Wink. Leave. No need to get angry, no need to get her fired. You're happy. She isn't. The end.
What you and Hammurabi are saying is that an eye for an eye makes two dudes into the Cyclops.
And a tooth for a tooth makes some people British, or meth heads, or British meth heads.
*dies laughing*
Well played!