I finally got around to listening to President Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech, and pretty early into it, he said that ‘cancel culture’ is about
driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it completely alien to our culture and to our values and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America.
I had to pause so I could think about that for a moment. Driving people from their jobs. Shaming dissenters. Demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees.
That’s an accurate description of His Excellency’s entire series of Emergency Orders — from the initial you really should stay at home through the most recent agents of the state are hereby empowered to search your premises without a warrant in order to fine or imprison you for disrespecting my whims.
To say nothing of the classic Soviet idea that a small number of well-connected ‘experts’ can sit in a room and dictate, down to the smallest detail, how the entire economy should operate, threatening to withhold permission to make a living from any business owner who dissents.
The doctrine that ‘public health trumps everything’ is the government formally embracing cancel culture.
And although the President is wrong about many things, he’s right about this: what His Excellency has started, and continues to escalate, is the very definition of totalitarianism, and has absolutely no place in the United States of America.