On the menu today: For about a decade, a largely progressive-driven “cancel culture” movement meant an utterance deemed sufficiently controversial could lead to instant firing, ostracization, and infamy. (We can’t have Kevin Williamson working at The Atlantic, right? Some lefty writer might feel unsafe, even if they aren’t talking on their phones during a theater performance.) Most conservatives knew the rules. If you offended a blue-haired co-worker with enough piercings to resemble a spiral notebook, you risked a long meeting with a stern HR manager or even summary termination. Meanwhile, a whole bunch of progressives got used to venting their spleen on social media with a level of rage that would make Hezbollah urge them to switch to decaf, without any significant professional consequence. But in the aftermath of the horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk, the shoe is on the other foot. And boy, do those progressives find it uncomfortable. Read on.
Our Dormant Sense of Shame
As discussed on Friday’s Three Martini Lunch podcast, if somebody posts something abominable, stupid, or hateful on social media after a tragedy, his employer doesn’t necessarily need to fire that employee. But the employer really should have some sort of intervention, some sort of action that says to the employee, “Don’t do this. It’s not good for the company, it makes all of us look bad, and it’s really not good for you, either. You look and sound like a cruel maniac. We really don’t want a cruel maniac in our workplace. You really shouldn’t be taking pleasure in the suffering of others. If this is what brings joy and meaning into your life, you have serious emotional issues and should be seeing a mental health professional.”
(It is more than fair to wonder if someone who reacts to shocking violence with glee or celebration will someday feel tempted to commit their own act of shocking violence.)
The appropriate response could be one of those long uncomfortable meetings with HR, a temporary suspension, a chewing out by the boss — mutatis mutandis. An employer is justified in treating a well-liked, productive, otherwise good employee who had an uncharacteristic intemperate outburst differently than an employee with a history of troubling behavior or other work problems.
And in many cases, the employer will be perfectly justified in cutting ties. If you’re a teacher, and you post something horrific, many parents will not want you teaching their children. (Another argument for school choice!) If you are a doctor or nurse, many patients will wonder if you give them the best care if you disagree with their politics.
It is not acceptable for the Chesterfield County Public Schools Dean of Students Alana Hartman-Hall to post, immediately after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, “You reap what you sow.”
It is not acceptable for the Colorado Department of Health’s suicide prevention coordinator to post sneering disdain for those mourning Kirk; it suggests that she wants to prevent suicide but not homicide.
It is not good for the Carolina Panthers’s communications coordinator to post, “Why are y’all sad? Your man said it was worth it” and reference the Wu-Tang Clan song “Protect Ya Neck.”
MSNBC has a lot of talking heads. It doesn’t need Matthew Dowd, the guy who, on-air immediately after the news of the shooting broke, speculated that “we don’t know if [the gunshot] was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration” and concluded, “I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.”
Over on his Substack, Dowd insists he is the true victim in this story, an entirely rational man who simply had the bad luck to be targeted by a political attack machine, betrayed by easily intimidated bosses:
The Right Wing media mob ginned up, went after me on a plethora of platforms, and MSNBC reacted to that mob. Even though most at MSNBC knew my words were being misconstrued, the timing of my words forgotten (remember I said this before anyone knew Kirk was a target), and that I apologized for any miscommunication on my part, I was terminated by the end of the day.
“Before anyone knew Kirk was a target,” huh? A high-profile figure is up on stage at a well-publicized, well-attended rally, gets hit in the neck, no reports of any other victims, and you think it might have been accidental? Does Dowd think conservatives often substitute firing guns at the stage for applause?
Oh, how will MSNBC continue to go on without Dowd’s sharp and incisive quick-thinking analysis?
Back in 2021, actor LeVar Burton — beloved from years hosting Reading Rainbow and his role in Star Trek: The Next Generation — insisted that what many conservatives called “cancel culture” was simply a long-overdue reckoning of consequences for objectionable statements: “‘In terms of cancel culture, I think it’s misnamed,’ Burton said. ‘I think we have a consequence culture. And that consequences are finally encompassing everybody in the society, whereas they haven’t been ever in this country.’”
However you choose to label the phenomenon, I notice that now few folks on the left see the firings and dismissals after Kirk’s death as an example of “consequence culture.”
Last night, the AP wrote, “Some conservatives are seeking to upend the lives and careers of those who disparaged Charlie Kirk after his death.” In the 1,149-word article, you have to get to the 15th paragraph before you get even a description of that “disparagement,” referring to an assistant dean at Middle Tennessee State University and professors at Austin Peay State University and Cumberland University: “All three lost their jobs for comments deemed inappropriate for expressing a lack of sympathy, or even for expressing pleasure, in the shooting of Kirk. One said Kirk ‘spoke his fate into existence.’”
Rolling Stone fumes, “Journalists, publicists, and college faculty have been fired after calling the right-wing influencer a divisive figure and making light of his assassination.” Well, maybe people shouldn’t “make light” of his assassinations, then? Is that too much to ask? Remember how everyone felt when Alex Jones insisted the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax? That’s how you sound to someone who liked the slain figure.
Alternatively, all these people who feel good when someone they disagree with politically is gunned down could try not expressing their views on social media for the whole wide world to see. If you say these things to your friends and family, the consequences will be much less severe.
On Friday, John Podhoretz of Commentary offered a series of posts on X that succinctly encapsulated what we’ve seen since the rise of social media and why so many previously normal-ish seeming people are suddenly blurting out the most horrific, cruel, and vindictive ideas imaginable. You should read the whole thing — I hope John turns it into a column or essay — but this is the gist:
Here’s the danger of social media. It allows people to publish their internal monologues. Our internal monologues and fantasies are often incredibly ugly. People go to therapists because they feel so guilty about them, and one of the tasks of a therapist is to explain that thoughts are not actions. You can rage in your thoughts about your brother, or someone at work, even fantasize about them dying — but you have done nothing and are guilty of nothing, and you need to forgive yourself and learn how to calm yourself down.
Since 2007, people have [had] a means of externalizing that interior monologue. . . .
If the world knew what was going on inside us, we would all be punished viscerally for it. Until 2007, for the most part, the world would not, could not, know. The question is, and I mean this literally: Can civilization survive now that we have been made witness to the interior lives of others?
Just about everybody’s got ugly thoughts sometimes. Thankfully, the percentage of people who act on those thoughts is pretty small; otherwise, society would be anarchy. And thankfully, most people keep those thoughts to themselves.
I would note that if you say something that violates other people’s sense of right and wrong — “I’m glad that guy is dead, I wish I had killed him myself” — in front of other people, you’re likely to see visible reactions of disapproval. You might even lose friends over it or get the sense that other people see you as a broken, hateful lunatic. That dormant sense of shame might awaken. But online, it’s much easier to dismiss those who criticize your comment, and also much easier to bask in the approval of other people, as well.
It’s Easy to ‘Avoid’ a Fight When You Just Give Up
This morning, the New York Times op-ed page features a guest column by Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at the think tank Defense Priorities, with the bold and eye-catching headline: “Here’s How Trump Can Prevent a War Over Taiwan.” As someone who’s deeply concerned about the fate of the nation of Taiwan and the inherent risks of Chinese military aggression, I eagerly read the column.
The way to avoid war, it turns out, is to surrender.
The president must go further by strongly reaffirming that the United States does not support Taiwan independence, reimposing restrictions on diplomatic contact and stopping congressional and State Department efforts to expand Taipei’s participation in international organizations, all of which China opposes. The Trump administration could also remove U.S. military trainers from Taiwan and weapon systems in the region that provoke China as much as they deter it.
If the U.S. agrees with Chinese demands to disarm Taiwan and put it in a situation where it has no ability to withstand an invasion, and the Taiwanese people are forced to accept subjugation akin to what happened to Hong Kong, then I suppose yes, technically, that is avoiding a war. It is also a formula for a more chaotic world and much higher levels of human suffering, and, I suspect, kicking the can down the road on an even bigger military confrontation.
Kavanaugh insists:
At any rate, this isn’t about abandoning Taiwan. It’s merely about reducing its central role in U.S.-China ties. Taiwan is of course valuable to the United States, not only symbolically as a fellow democracy but also as a source of advanced semiconductors. But even all that is not worth America’s going to war. China is a formidable military power, with a growing arsenal of missiles and nuclear weapons that can reach the U.S. mainland. With its military resources already overstretched by conflicts elsewhere, the United States can ill afford conflict with China.
And while we’re at it, Trump should throw in requiring TikTok on every American’s phone.
(Why is it that the one form of First Amendment expression that Trump is resolutely willing to defend, in defiance of the law and the Supreme Court, is TikTok, the platform full of people doing touchdown dances and spiking the football over Charlie Kirk’s assassination? Apparently, in this administration, pharmaceutical companies don’t have a First Amendment right to advertise their products, but a state-affiliated Chinese company gets to keep their propaganda tool operating? How about if we get Pfizer running ads on TikTok?)
Trump already terminated funding Radio Free Asia, which Xi Jinping and the regime in Beijing hated.
Defense Priorities is the libertarian foreign-policy think tank founded by allies of Charles Koch and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. They would insist they’re not isolationist, just noninterventionist.
I don’t disagree with this crew on quite everything; I think there’s value in, at minimum, keeping open lines of communication with Ahmad al Sharaa and the new regime in Syria and cooperating where it makes sense. (Because you know every adversary we have is going to be talking with the new regime, too.)
But the Defense Policies policy director recently proposed “Trump should sow allies’ doubts about the strength of U.S. military commitments.” A senior fellow called for a “phased drawdown of U.S. forces” from Europe; and two fellows called for “scaling down” the American military presence in South Korea, dropping U.S. opposition to North Korean nuclear weapons development, establishing formal diplomatic relations Pyongyang, and a phased lifting of sanctions and export controls on North Korea.
The think tank argues regime change in Iran “isn’t worth the risk” and insists “peace through strength” cannot work in the Middle East.
In late August, one of the organization’s senior fellows contended the U.S. relationship with Israel is a “moral hazard.” Hey, they finally found one regime they deem morally objectionable!
ADDENDUM: Our John Fund, noticing that certain liberals are belatedly recognizing that universal basic income — the idea that poverty can be alleviated by just giving people cash — isn’t working as intended:
Kelsey Piper, an editor of Vox’s Future Perfect project, notes that “homeless people, new mothers and low-income Americans all over the country received thousands of dollars” as part of various large UBI studies. “And it’s practically invisible in the data.” Piper says these “careful, well-conducted studies” have resulted in “an amount of evidence that in almost any other context we’d consider definitive,” even though “you’d be hard-pressed to hear about it in the media.” She concludes that “winning the war on poverty will require more than just transfers, it will require building and improving institutions that provide education, health care and housing.” In the meantime, however, she says “noble lies have permeated the halls of truth-seeking organizations like the media.”