On Republican Tropes and Bewilderment With A Cancel Culture Kicker.

For a party that has veered head-on into xenophobia, paranoia, and isolationism, the staunch, and nearly across the board refusal they show regarding mask-wearing has got to be a one-off.

Republicans have always preached the Gospel of Paranoia. They are often hyper-vigilant about protecting themselves, their families, and Innocent Children from intrusive outside influence. They are exceedingly touchy and snippy about personal space and keeping anything that is not them at an arms-length.

Not wanting to take chances with anyone not vetted and true coming into their little worlds, you think the bunkerites would go in for full body suits, personal respirators, and decontamination cubes to avoid being infected by the germ-soaked others among them.

It seems a little strange that they turned towards Liberty and Personal Freedom over Paranoia and Self-preservation. Not A lot strange, just a tad.

It’s when people mash them together that it gets scary. When a frightened group of people wields enough power to declare Their God-Given Right to be Free of those they deem sickly, unfit, unwell, disease-ridden, suspect, dirty, and carriers. That’s when you get to box cars and the Ultimate Solutions of these dystopian fantasists.

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I wonder about the conservative reactionary response to Cancel Culture as well. How motivated and heated they get over woke-ness, CRT, LGBTQ+, and other collections of lettering that so irks them; IRS, AFL-CIO, HR, ETC.

They seem to go spare over everyone else’s firm statement on inclusivity and consideration. And god help you if your worldview doesn’t have them at the fore. All benefits of the doubt and chances given are for them alone.

I think what bothers them is not Cancel Culture itself but that they are not the ones playing Whack-A-Mole with the cancel stick. Republicans have been pretty solid on just who is and who is not a Real American.

To be confronted with a whole swath of people holding them up to an ideal they don’t like and finding them wanting has to be galling.

For Republicans, in particular, cis-gendered, heterosexual, white men are the sole arbiters of Right and Righteousness. They’re telling us so all the time.

It isn’t that they disapprove of Cancel Culture’s quick judgment and intractability of the Elimination Round; it’s that they see themselves as the only qualified Judges. Maybe that is why they are so resistant to the hardline of You Don’t Matterism, they are used to being the ones who decide.

They want to have exclusive rights to exclusion. If there is any Cancelling to be done around here, Republicans expect to be the Cancelers, not the Canceled.

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