So you have all of these oppressive systems that create unequal outcomes in life, liberty and happiness depending on factors like race, gender, physical ability, class, etc.

There is a solidarity project, with roots hundreds of years old, to correct these unequal outcomes.

That project is extremely difficult and fragile, because as you can see, there are many different interests that must be accommodated and managed, all while those oppressive systems work harder and harder to sink the project

You’re bailing out a boat in a storm with a soup ladle

But there’s one part of the solidarity project that is straightforward, even though in practice, it’s not always simple:

Do not hurt those with less power than you, or through inaction, allow those with less power to come to harm.

That’s it.

When you hear people decrying “cancel culture,” what’s happening is:

- the solidarity project desperately trying to meet its mandate of preventing harm by checking the actions of someone with power, who is impacting others with less power

- a certain amount of success in that

People who are outside the project absolutely lose their minds about this. Especially people who, on paper, ought to be supporting it because they have a particular political analysis.

So much of this is about how your identity impacts your relationship to power and safety.

When I see someone fretting about “outrage” and “cancel” culture, I can usually assume they’ve largely been on the right side of power and safety.

Occasionally, they’ve even made a devil’s agreement to trade on their identity to secure power and safety at the expense of others.

I guess I have two points:

First, it’s literally about keeping people alive. You’ve got state-sponsored executions in the streets, you have physical abuse and attacks, preventable loss of life due to unequal health access, unequal infant mortality…

It goes on

Even when the stakes aren’t life and death, they’re still extreme. A life of desperation, precarity and trauma can be on the table if power is arranged against you.

People are ~outraged~, exhausted, and furious for such good reasons. They want and need backup.

People in pain and crisis can’t always be polite, conduct themselves in a way that’s convenient for you, or spare energy to perfectly strategize.

If you care about a better world, you maintain solidarity anyway. This part is messy. I’ve fucked it up, you probably have too.