Cancel This!

An open letter to emotional hemophiliacs everywhere

Flannery O’Conner... J.K. Rowling... Dr. Seuss... Shakespeare?

It’s hard to keep up with the growing list of authors and public figures - dead and alive - being “cancelled” ... all in the name of tolerance, of course.  

Just this week I read about the case of one Winston Marshall, a banjoist in the popular(?) UK act, Mumford & Sons, who had to “take a break” from his band after he dared admit that he had (gulp!) read and agreed with a book by a conservative-leaning author who had the gall to criticize Antifa. 

Never mind that the author in question is a gay, first-generation Vietnamese immigrant whose parents escaped that socialist republic by boat following persecution in their home country...

Hmm… Might not this man have something to say about the dangers of political extremism? 

Maybe... maybe not. 

But if he - and even those who read his work - are silenced, cowered and brow-beaten into submission, we’ll never know...

Winston’s public excoriation was, predictably enough, followed by the mandatory and performative struggle session, whereby the artist took to the social media waves to apologize profusely for his thoughtcrime, prostrating himself at the altar of political correctness for the anyway-unpardonable crime of daring to read and think outside the accepted orthodoxy... which is to say, to think for himself at all.

People’s “feelings” had been hurt, he groveled, as if he was addressing a crowd of children who hadn’t quite grasped the meaning of that old ditty, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words should never hurt me.”

Indeed, it is a truly pathetic display, watching a grown man unable or unwilling to defend his right to his own mind, reduced to a sad, self-flagellating sack, slouched at the feet of the chanting mob.

How long until we see neighbors snitching on one another for expressing the “wrong” opinions at dinner parties, or children denouncing their parents to their Social Justice Warriors-cum-political-ideologue teachers?

No doubt it’s already happening, somewhere... 

In the UK city of Bristol, police are already taking action against “offensive” speech by enforcing a series of dictates designed to censor thought and words. “If it’s offensive,” reads their mindless slogan, “it’s an offense!”

But it’s not only invertebrate musicians failing to appease their virtue-signaling, hipster audiences living under imminent threat of cancelation either...

Canonical texts are also on the chopping block, including Shakespeare himself. In a January article in the influential School Library Journal, one miffed columnist denounced the Bard as being “full of problematic, outdated ideas, with plenty of misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism, and misogynoir.”

That last indictment, for those unfamiliar with Critical Race Theory and the infinitely-regressive concept of intersectionality, describes prejudice against black women... something apparently not sufficiently covered under racism and misogyny. 

The article went on to praise a brave troop of activist teachers for improving on Shakespeare’s hopelessly out-dated work by blending it with more palatable, progressive ideas. 

One teacher, for example, thought to interpret Romeo & Juliet through, “the lens of adolescent brain development with a side of toxic masculinity analysis.” 

Another paired readings of Hamlet with lessons on “what to do with grief and ways to keep from spiraling when faced with stressful situations.” 

Presumably this interpretation was directed at students who fall to pieces when one of their nonsensical ideas - like the absurd notion that 2+2=5 - is exposed to the harsh light of reality. Or when they are asked to engage with someone who holds views other than their own... like those they claim to find in...wait for it... William Shakespeare. 

Still another teacher - oh, excuse me... educator - uses Shakespeake’s tragedy Coriolanus to inject a bit of good ol’ fashioned Marxist theory into the minds of her impressionable high-school students. “When they read a text written centuries ago [that] addresses events and people from even longer ago,” she explained, “it is easier for them to divorce their analysis from their biases and inherited beliefs about class in the modern era.”

What biases and inherited beliefs might these be, exactly? Or could this simply be code for “aberrant thought in desperate needs of teacher-led correction.” 

There is something particularly Orwellian about occupying kids’ minds... It was Lenin, after all, who said, “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”

As most anyone with an ounce of intellectual honesty realizes, all this nonsense about “diversity” and “inclusivity” doesn’t extend to the realm of ideas at all. When it comes to thought, there are only two categories in 2021: the prohibited and the mandatory. 

Yes, Gentle Listener, in an age where asking questions is considered tantamount to being a “denier” (regardless of the subject at hand), one is left to wonder exactly what is happening to our culture...

And by culture, let me be clear: I specifically mean Western culture... that is, classically liberal societies, the kind that cherish concepts like private property, individual rights, rule of law, freedom of speech, press and assembly and, yes, the right to a fair trial... as opposed to the hysterical witch hunts currently sweeping the nation. 

These are concepts developed and nurtured over hundreds, nay thousands of years of trial and, yes, error...the latter being a crucial component of the learning process.

And yet, here we are being encouraged to “throw out” the lessons of yore, to erase our history, to burn our books and topple our statues, as if we have already arrived at the enlightened age of perfection, autochthonous, fully-fledged humans formed of the god’s own pure clay and shot forth into a moment in time where no more learning is necessary, no further inquiry required. 

Of course, it’s easy to claim all the answers when you don’t tolerate any questions. 

“Ah, but Joel,” I hear you reckoning, “what on earth does all this ‘white, male, privileged’ complaining have to do with money and investing and the markets?”

Everything, as it turns out. 

You see, the very same rotten, divisive neo-Marxist ideology that threatens to tear our culture asunder is at work in the economy at large too... destroying sound money, encouraging reckless malinvestment and bidding a whole generation of useful idiots to take no thought for the ‘morrow and, instead, bet everything against their own future...

To help connect the dots between fake money and faux culture, between collapsing attention spans and shortened holding periods, between win-lose deals today and a decidedly lose-lose tomorrow, I caught up with my old mate, Dan Denning. 

There’s lots to get through this week, Dear Listener, so grab a coffee or a copa, depending on the time of day, and join me for my full conversation with Dan, below...

Intro Ep. #17 - Dan Denning on Cancel Culture, Unsound Money and Unsound Minds

And, as always, enjoy your weekend.

Cheers,
Joel Bowman

April, 2021 ~ Buenos Aires