Cancel Culture and the Free Speech Argument

“This began before Trump. As Bernie Sanders told Rolling Stone after the 2016 election, when the small-town American saw himself or herself on TV, it was always “a caricature. Some idiot. Or maybe some criminal, some white working-class guy who has just stabbed three people.” These caricatures drove a lot of voters toward Trump, especially when he began telling enormous crowds that the lying media was full of liars who lied about everything.

“After 2016 it became axiomatic that the Trump voter, or the Leave voter, was – without exception now – a crazed, racist monster. As detailed here multiple times, ruminations on Republican voter behaviors became not merely uninteresting to pundits after November 2016, but actively taboo. By 2020, the official answer to What’s the Matter with Kansas? was that nobody cared, because Kansas is a White Supremacist Project and Can Go Fuck Itself.”

 

Alotta writing by Matt in this book review about cancel culture and culture clash and populism as seen through the lens of Frank's Kansas without a single supporting quote by a Kansan.

 

Which is funny because one of my criticisms of Taibbi is that he always seems to have just the right quote that often doesn't pass the smell test.

 

Interesting review, and I'll definitely have to check out Frank's new book.

"What's the Matter With Kansas" (which sits on my bookshelf, along with early editions of "The Baffler") revealed the new type of Republicans — the cultural-issue oriented "true believers" as opposed to the traditional Chamber of Commerce ones.

Somewhere along the line, the Democrats decided they should try to work with/attract votes from the Country Club Republicans rather than the working-class "deplorables." We've seen how that worked out.

 

Started in the early 90s with Clinton and "triangulation" and the Democratic Leadership Council, I think. By the beginning of his second term it was hardening into party policy.

The Clinton Principle

 

Not sure how you can write these two paragraphs in a row with a straight face, but here they are.

1) Press too conservative.

2) Same press too radical.

It’s no accident that the consensus press pumping out these messages spent the last four years denouncing Sanders – whose campaign was a polite promise to restore New Deal values for everyone, Republicans included – as far too radical for America.

Once Sanders was out of the way, those same news outlets embraced a significantly more radical ideology, one that swore a lot, described everyone to the right of Ibram Kendi as a white supremacist, and told small business owners they should put up with their stores being smashed for the cause of progress.

 

I think he's saying mainstream press is a vampire squid that morphs into whatever it needs to be to control narratives.

 

I think Taibbi has been part of the mainstream press for a long time and should stop trying to pretend he's not.

 

Nah, he went to the James Dean Journalism School of Rebellion.

 

I believe that’s Taibbi saying the mainstream press is full of it.

I don’t recall the media saying small businesses should put up with their businesses being smashed. But perhaps, in covering the protests and not sufficiently pointing out the rioting and violence (there has been plenty) that’s the effect.

The line about not caring about what Kansas thinks, or shitting on voters who can just go fuck themselves no matter what they think, is spot on though.

 

Not sufficiently pointing out the rioting? I'm not sure they were any except for maybe that one night in Minneapolis? But there are many Americans who don't realize how many massive, completely peaceful protests there have been because MSM focused so much on the violence and vandalism on the edges of some protests, and the images of stormtrooper cops in many others

 

Thought Police