Cancel used to be a fairly straight forward transaction. You canceled a reservation to dinner. Your flight was cancelled. Now cancel can mean your reputation and very career can be ruined if you offer an opinion that is controversial or unacceptable in the crazy court of social media. The normal sentence is shaming the person who dared offer some thought counter to the prevailing cultural trends. I understand pushing back against hateful stereotypes and name calling. That needs to be called out. But more and more this technique is being used to silence the heartfelt convictions of people who simply have a different world view. Questioning a cultural trend now results in public shaming, bullying, and harassment. I loathe the strategy of organized shaming to silence speech and cultural discourse. One of my personal hypocrisy tests is to examine my own propensity to “cancel” others that I don’t agree with. I might not launch an online attack but the reality
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