The Republicans are whingeing and whining about “cancel culture,” which they seem to regard as a fiendish new invention of the Left. Somehow, it just isn’t fair that those lousy libruls are expressing their disgust with what the Republican Party has become by speaking their minds and taking positive action against people, businesses, and institutions they regard as antithetical to a free democracy.

Couple of points here. First of all, “cancel culture” is probably older than written history. There are other names for it:  boycott, voting with my wallet, voting with my feet, shunning—people have been doing it forever. The only thing new about cancel culture is the name.

Shunning has always played a major role in how people control their societies. The threat of shunning is sufficient to keep people in some societies in line. Boycott utilizes economic power to send a message. Importantly, these social tools are not the tools of the powerful leaders in a culture—they are the tools of the everyday person. 

We have the power of voting—once every few years, and the impact of that individual vote is sometimes difficult to experience, especially when your candidate loses. But shunning and boycotting—you, Mr. or Ms. Everyperson, can decide to do it, execute it yourself, and feel satisfied that you have DONE SOMETHING to express your opinions, values, or ethics. It’s a level of satisfaction that cannot be provided by voting—as important as voting is.

And you would be following an ancient and honorable tradition in doing so. No one can force you to spend time with people who hold values that oppose your own. No one can force you to spend money with a business that supports things with which you disagree. These are YOUR powers, to use as you see fit.

Which is why Republicans are screaming about cancel culture. They are watching in horror as their nasty, bigoted, win-at-all-costs, misogynistic, homophobic, paranoid, entitled white culture swirls slowly down the drain.

They KNOW you want to cancel them, and they are terrified. 

I do not spend money with any business that donates to Republicans—especially to the last incumbent of the White House. I do not spend time with people who do not share my values. I do not spend money in or visit states that allow open-carry, criminalize abortion, pass voter suppression laws, or acted like giant babies during the pandemic. I try to spread the word about people or businesses that are violating the norms of our democracy.

Because, yes, Republicans, I DO want to cancel your culture. I want to obliterate it and you from the face of the earth. I want to bury your barren, mean, selfish “ideas” so deep that no one will ever utter the phrase “trickle-down economics” again.

I want the Confederate flag (which was not the Confederate flag, but the battle flag of the Confederate Army of the Potomac, and thus a sham in and of itself) to become a symbol of such profound shame that when people fly it in front of their houses or off the backs of those stupid oversized pickup trucks, citizens run to destroy it in outrage.

I want every monument to the Confederacy to be torn down and repurposed to help black communities. 

I want anti-abortion proponents to be forced to work (under strict supervision) with pregnant women who have medical counter-indications for pregnancy, or whose fetus has been diagnosed as non-viable, or who is single and is trying to feed four kids on the salary of a fast-food worker because her husband deserted her.

I want states that have passed anti-abortion laws to pass equally draconian laws that control men’s bodies—there never was an abortion that didn’t start in a man’s balls, after all. Mandatory reversible vasectomies for all males at puberty. Death sentence for any man impregnating a women against her will. Death sentence for rape. All rape, even when a married man rapes his wife.

I want the other members of the Supreme Court to rise up in disgust and eject the religious nut and the drunk rapist.

Yes, I want to cancel your culture. Every last bit of it. You are damn right I do.