During his Mt. Rushmore speech, Trump broadened his attack on the opponents of traditional American (i.e., Confederate) values to include advocates of cancel culture. My reactions are as follows:
- The man who persistently identifies the MSM as “enemies of the people” and wants to change defamation laws as a supporter of liberal democracy and the First Amendment? Who is going to buy into that?
- Cancel culture only has a minimal footprint in the Democratic Party. Joe Biden certainly isn’t a fan, and Bernie Sanders is a class, not culture, warrior. Ten years from now, this may become a serious issue, but not today.
- As readers of this blog are aware, I have nothing but disdain for Twitter mobs, but they aren’t real mobs. Unlike Trump’s core supporters, they don’t have ropes and guns. All you have to do to avoid them is stay off social media. That’s easy enough; I do it every day.
- Trump’s real issue is the structure of large social media companies as privately-owned and operated public spaces. He has half a point there. Sooner or later, Facebook in particular will either be broken up or regulated as a public utility, because Mark Zuckerberg cannot be trusted to determine what is and isn’t acceptable public discourse.