An investigation into the centrist Democrats’ confusing, seemingly inconsistent criteria for whom they will grant forgiveness and who should be “cancelled.”
Matthew McKenna
The concept of universalism, the idea that some values are embraced by all cultures, has been perverted by the powerful to justify the unjustifiable. Crusading missions to spread Christianity, capitalism, democracy, human rights, and protection of women have all been done under the umbrella of the belief that there are values that all peoples of the Earth should embrace. Thus, they must be made to embrace them at the business end of a weapon. However, despite its hefty premise, and murderous application, there is a kernel of truth to universalism. There are in fact common values and virtues present in diverse cultures of the earth, none of which warranted the extreme violence to instill. The practice of forgiveness finds common reverence in cultures spanning the Earth and across time periods. From the Abrahamic religions to Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism, this virtue plays a vital role in both the canonic development of the faiths and also the aspirational behavior of the followers. The road to practicing forgiveness is, of course, aspirational and often riddled with obstacles. Even devout followers of the major faiths struggle to express forgiveness consistently in all situations, so it should come as no surprise, that members of far less holy entities express the virtue with extreme hypocrisy and selectivity. I refer to the American liberal* class.
The MSNBC watching,”West Wing” loving, NPR listening, craft beer and wine sipping liberal is a unique beast in their practice of the aforementioned virtue. To the extent that the average corporate Democrat has any real values, these beliefs do not seem to dictate the nature by which they dole our forgiveness (or tolerance for that matter). To explore this strange selectivity further, let’s examine some unique cases in which the liberals as whole have granted or denied their forgiveness and tolerance. By exploring the hypocrisy, inconsistency, and opportunism present in the list of people on whom liberal forgiveness is bestowed, versus who is “cancelled,” it may be possible to derive some useful conclusions about this strange breed of the American electorate.
*Note* The use of the terms,”liberal, centrist Democrat, neoliberal, corporate Democrat” will be used fairly interchangeably in this post. They are not meant to apply to all people who vote Democrat, but rather a specific kind of Democrat. This is the generally white, affluent, well-educated, centrist Democrat. This is the person that places priority on incremental change, civility, and a polite veneer, over substantive change in terms of redistribution of wealth, racial justice, and ending American imperialism.
The Unforgivables
The Centrist Democrats’ Delusional Version of Democracy
If one wants to really get on the bad side of the Democratic party, one of the best avenues to take is to challenge the centrist authority. Indeed, the “Democratic party,” does not seem to value the practice of democracy. Ralph Nader, the perpetual friend of the American working class and consumer advocate ran for president in 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008. Seeing as the Democrats lost half of those contests to a man who is an unrepentant international war criminal and ended his term as president with a less than a 30 % approval rating, one would assume there’d have been some introspection amongst the party that lost twice to him. For example, how is it that in 2000 Al Gore lost his home state of Tennessee? Why did the Democratic party coalesce around a candidate in John Kerry in 2004, who had supported the then unpopular Iraq War? Introspection in the party, and the American project at large, is not a strong suit.
The election that most effectively demonstrates this dynamic of liberal forgiveness, or lack thereof, is the 2000 contest. That year, running as an independent, Nader was running on the “radical” platform that included:
Legal abortion paid for by universal health care
Gay rights, including marriage
Affirmative action
Opposition to the death penalty
Replacing drug war incarceration with treatment
Reducing greenhouse gases
Rejection of NAFTA, GATT & WTO
Universal healthcare
Living wage
Redistribution of wealth through taxes
Negative income tax to lift people above poverty line
Restore entitlement programs eviscerated by Clinton
Abolition of nuclear weapons
Cutting defense budget by 50%
Nearly all of these platforms have been embraced by later candidates who ran for president, some of whom won. (See Trump – rejection of NAFTA, Bernie Sanders – Universal Healthcare, Joe Biden – Drug War incarceration, and ElizabethWarren – redistribution of wealth.)
Nonetheless, Nader remains in the minds of many liberals, the “spoiler” that cost Al Gore the election to George Bush. To believe this requires several delusions. First and foremost, it requires a bottom up distribution of responsibility. That is, it suggests that voters should be blamed for voting their conscience, not powerful politicians and well-funded parties for neglecting to appeal to vast swaths of the electorate. In this line of logic, the average progressive voter is to blame for Gore’s loss, not the 8 years the Clinton Administration spent cutting social entitlements, deregulating Wall Street, passing NAFTA, and passing the 1994 Crime Bill. This logic also exonerates Al Gore for losing his home state of Tennessee, along with West Virginia. Oh, and then as vice president, he PROCEEDED over the congressional hearing where NOT A SINGLE DEMOCRATIC SENATOR signed on to demand a recount in the disputed Florida vote, after widely publicized (and true) reports of voter disenfranchisement. This included the purging of 94,000 voters from the ballot by the private firm, Database Technologies. This voter suppression was done under the justification that the purged citizens were convicted felons. Of this disproportionately minority demographic, and overwhelmingly Democrat voting populace, 97% were wrongfully purged, as in they were not felons (a dubious reason to disenfranchise to begin with). So to summarize, the US senate had the power to call attention to the blatant disenfranchisement of the black community in Florida but chose not to. In 2000, Gore may as well have been presiding over the Dixie-run Democratic party of the 1900’s given its affinity for promoting black voter suppression. Their apathy to black disenfranchisement spoke to a connection to Democratic policies from an earlier time. Also, instead of blaming those 24,000 Democrats that voted for Nader against the Corporatocracy, it makes a lot more sense to blame the 308,000 registered Democrats in Florida who voted outright for Bush. (Bush won by only 900 votes.) For his sin of contesting the Democratic party, Nader remains villainous in the minds of many Democratic voters and nearly all members of the party’s staffers.
With Nader out of politics, but the Democrats continuing to flounder in the election in 2016, his role as scapegoat was replaced by his eventual successor in the Green Party, Jill Stein. The Democrats blamed Stein for their loss to a gameshow host with similarly baffling logic. The logic starts with the assumption that those who vote third party would otherwise vote for one of the two major powers, a demonstrably untrue assertion. It also exonerates the Clinton campaign of nearly all malfeasance including failing to campaign in key battleground states, losing over a third the nearly 700 counties that had twice voted for Barack Obama, and consistently demonstrating a deference to Wall Street just years after the banksters received a bailout from the exiting Democratic president while millions of working people had their homes foreclosed on. If the enemy of the Democratic party is the option of other parties, then it can be confirmed that the party is not worthy of its namesake. The idea that underdog candidates and marginalized parties should cede their right to run in elections due to an assumption that only one of two parties can win is decidedly undemocratic. It is a bottom up conception of accountability that demands little from candidates from the dominant parties to make concessions to the people, and assumes that the people should nonetheless fall in line.
The Liberals’ Love-Hate Relationship with Press Freedom
The liberals have correctly identified Donald J. Trump as a threat to press freedom. The Donald’s attacks on press freedom are numerous and well-documented. These include his often belligerent tone with reporters, his frequent descriptions of CNN as “fake news,” and the New York Times’ as “failing.” He has certainly spearheaded an effort to delegitimize the press in an effort to create his own delusional worldview. However, when it comes to his administration’s greatest threat to press freedom, the liberals are almost entirely silent.
The most telling revelations of government crimes of our time have been exposed by one organization, Wikileaks. The former head of this network is Julian Assange. The Aussie had already made enemies of the US national security state for his publication of Chelsea Manning’s revelations of the Afghan and Iraq war logs and the Guantanamo Files. These provided detailed accounts of US war crimes including wanton murder of civilians, torture, corruption, and lies. However, mainstream US liberal thought is the fact that Assange dared to publish the diplomatic cables of the Hillary Clinton run state department and later the emails of the Democratic National Committee. For Assange’s crimes against their anointed Queen Hillary, he has been rendered an unforgivable pariah in most liberal circles. Never mind that the aforementioned war logs documented thousands of severe crimes of the US government, that heroic action will forever be outweighed by Assange’s decision to later embarrass the leadership of the DNC with documentation of their own actions. The democratic animus toward the embattled Australian remains essentially that he made public the dirty tactics of the Democratic party. To be clear, this included colluding against Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary, allowing the Clinton campaign to usurp control of the DNC. The leak also revealed that the Clinton camp played up Donald Trump himself in a Pied Piper-esque scheme to ensure a Clinton victory against a candidate they assumed would be easy to defeat. Had the latter gambit worked, it is likely Democrats would have forgiven Assange by now. Alas, we live in a world not dictated by the deluded fantasies of Democratic party apparatchiks. As we know, in 2016, Donald J. Trump won the election via his electoral college victory, and thus Assange and Wikileaks would be doomed to condemnation by the Democrats. National security officials defend illegal US wars and chide Assange for putting American officials in danger. This claim was put forward even as Assange communicated his effort to eliminate this risk, and Obama’s Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, himself admitted that the leaks “Did little harm.” However, the outrage liberals feel for Assange has nothing to do with national security or concern for US personnel. It has to do with that fact that he embarrassed their leaders. That fact that the leak of the State Department cables, the DNC emails published by Wikileaks were unflattering, embarrassing, and at times revelatory of criminal behavior, is what continues to draw the animosity of Democratic supporters and leaders alike.
The Trump administration is currently attempting to extradite Julian Assange from Great Britain to the United States, where they hope to pursue prosecution. This would set an incredibly dangerous precedent for prosecuting journalists and publishers. The charges in question have nothing to do with the DNC emails or Hillary, but entirely with the heroic publishing of the Afghan and Iraq war logs. The details of Wikileaks revelations have been published by newspapers throughout the world, including the Washington Post, New York Times, and the Guardian. Even the Obama administration, no friend of whistleblowers, refused to pursue Assange for this, as they knew the same principle could also be used to eventually charge more traditional publishers like the NYT. As Assange endures his torturous extradition trial and potential prosecution in the United States, the liberal media and US media at large ignore this injustice, even with grave implications for their own futures. The Democrats have decided that Assange is so unforgivable that their grudge held against him outweighs any ideological value that they place on press freedom.
Turning the Other Cheek on War Crimes
So what actions will the American Liberal forgive? Nearly anything! Seriously, there are almost no bounds to the level of depravity, violence, and sociopathy to which the Democratic establishment will not forgive, but at least one of the below conditions have to be met.
- The crimes must have been committed several years ago to give everyone time to forget (preferably more than 5 years).
- The sinner is now publicly critical of Donald J. Trump.
- The victims of the sinners transgressions are domestically marginalized or non-white populations that live in far away countries.
- Above all, the transgressions must not reflect badly on the sacred leaders of Democratic party.
Don’t Remind the Iraqis that the Democrats Don’t Care About Them
This is the kind of logic that explains what otherwise seem to be peculiar inconsistencies of liberal condemnation and forgiveness. President George Bush and his acolytes should, in theory, be some of the most unforgivable individuals walking the Earth today. At one time, they actually were the subject of the Democratic party’s ire. As the Bush administration committed domestic and international crimes including aggressive war, manufacturing of evidence (lying) for said wars, torture, extraordinary rendition, and domestic surveillance some seemingly principled liberal politicians objected. However, this outrage turned out not to be motivated by empathy for the millions of lives destroyed by Bush, but mostly by opportunism. In hindsight, it is not hard to see why this is. While a few courageous individuals called out the former Republican administration on substantive claims of violations both constitutional and international, most Democrats were content to express their disdain for Bush only to the extent it would be politically beneficial and have since silenced their criticism all together.
It is imperative to remember that a sizable portion of the “opposition” party (including its 2004, 2016, 2020 presidential candidates), supported the blatantly criminal and murderous invasion of Iraq. In this light, it is no surprise that the Bush admin’s crimes have been forgiven by the Democrats. To indict Bush for his aggressive wars would be to indict many democrats for their complicity. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who admirably did vote against the Iraq War, has proven quite forgiving of Bush’s crimes despite acknowledging their existence. The Speaker of the House refused to impeach Bush even with a Democratic majority in Congress. Perhaps she knew that had impeachment been pursued, her own record of silence on the Bush torture program would render her complicit. Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, also proved himself Christ-like in his forgiveness of his predecessor, declining to prosecute any member of the administration for their grave violations of international law and electing instead to “look Forward.”
Obama’s vice president proved himself to be even more forgiving. Despite claiming to have been tricked into supporting the Iraq War (support that lasted many months into the affair), 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, perpetual friend of Republicans, has apparently long since forgiven the alleged “deceit” that led to the deaths of over a million people. Biden’s profound ability to turn the other cheek was demonstrated in his awarding of George W. Bush the liberty medal in 2017. Apparently, Joe is so forgiving that even after W. “deceived” him into championing the war that killed some 5,000 Americans, he won’t even hold a grudge. Many more, including Biden’s son, died to the war’s indirect effects of the war, yet To Joe, this tragedy was not sufficient enough to prevent him from publicly presenting Bush an award. How many others could be convinced to heap praise upon the individual who was complicit in their own child’s death? Something here must be either a lie, disingenuous, or sociopathic in nature.
Today, the members of the Bush administration that authored millions of Arab deaths, the destruction of American civil liberties, and put the United States on the path of forever war are consistently rehabilitated by many individuals and institutions of liberal thought. This includes the former Democratic First Lady Michelle Obama sharing cute moments with the ex-president, and popular TV host Ellen Degeneres declaring her affinity for the Torturer in Chief. Some media figures have alleged that we currently live in the age of “Cancel Culture,” wherein it is claimed that bad tweets and retrograde statements render one a social pariah. The aforementioned benevolent treatment and acceptance of perpetrators of the greatest crimes of the 21st century should prove an effective counter argument to the assertion that this culture of cancellation exists in any real sense.
The Trickle Down Theory
The forgiveness of the 43rd presidential administration does not stop at the executive but rather trickles down. Aside from Bush having apparently atoned for his crimes in the Liberal mind, so too has his Secretary of State, Colin Powell, who lied to the United Nations regarding the faux case of Iraq’s WMDs and connections to Al Qaeda. For his penance, Powell was invited to speak at the 2020 Democratic convention.
David Frum was the Bush speechwriter who coined the term “Axis of Evil,” manufacturing consent for the invasion of Iraq. Frum himself has admitted that he was told by the Bush team to sum up in a “sentence or two” the “best case for going after Iraq.” Frum acknowledged he was being asked to provide a “justification for war.” He dutifully wrote the speech and even left the door open with some rhetorical insurance for the Bush administration to attack Iran and North Korea as well, should they choose to. Years later, he defended the US and UK crime in Iraq by blaming the Iraqis for just not having their shit together enough to take advantage of the great offer of democracy Americans gave them. Despite his war inducing propagandizing, he has become a darling of the centrist Democrats, seen as a proud member of the #resistance and consistently welcomed on MSNBC, NPR, and other liberal networks.
The liberal media was also willing to celebrate John Bolton, the former Bush administration ambassador to the UN and recently, the National Security Advisor to Donald Trump. In the service of promoting the pretense for the desired war in 2003, the mustachioed ambassador resorted to tactics including threatening the family of Jose Bustani, the head of the Office for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. However, the perpetual warmonger received atonement unquestioned spotlight in mainstream media. All he had to do was write a “tell-all” book about the Bad Orange Man, wherein the substance of his criticism was that the president was insufficiently hungry for war with Iran and the DPRK. The message is clear. War criminal redemption is available with the right publisher and a juicy story about The Donald!
You Can’t Forgive What You Never Objected To
Then there are the sins that cannot be forgiven because they lack the prerequisite of being objected to it in the first place. In a testament to the deficit of liberal principle, the sins of the Clinton and Obama administrations were and remain invisible. As William Jefferson Clinton bombed Iraq an average of three times per week in the 1990’s, there were no major anti-war demonstrations. Neither were there major objections amongst Democrats to Clinton maintaining the most restrictive sanctions in modern history on Iraq. The resulting malnourishment and deprivation of medical supplies killed 500,000 Iraqi children, a human “price” that Madeleine Albright described as “worth it.” Conversely, those same sanctions were more accurately described as acts of “genocide” by former UN humanitarian coordinator, Denis Halliday. Clinton remains welcomed in liberal circles, recently being invited to speak at the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
The anti-war sentiment expressed by Democrats that existed during the Bush administration was apparently performative. Barack Obama was at war every single day of his presidency, yet there were no mass scale anti-war protests. The man who was apparently against wars, albeit only “dumb wars,” dropped 100,000 bombs on seven countries over the course of his presidency, more than his predecessor did in his “dumb wars.” He conducted a drone assassination program uninhibited by supervision or international borders. Some investigations reported that 90% of those killed by these strikes were not the intended target. Even so, one has to wonder, even if only the “intended targets” were killed, why does Barack Obama have the right to declare himself the global executioner? Obama even took the initiative and extended executive power to extrajudicial murder of US citizens. Apparently even killing Americans was not enough for any widespread anger toward the 44th president. One wonders how the #resistance (formed since Trump’s election) would react if the 45th president had eviscerated a 16-year-old non-white American citizen from his existence. Barack Obama did this exact crime when he extra-judiciously executed Abdurahman Al Awlaki as he sat down to eat with his friends at a cafe in Yemen. When pressed about the issue, Obama surrogate Robert Gibbs responded, “Perhaps he should have had a more responsible father.” Obviously a counterfactual, but I suspect if Trump had murdered a 16-year-old Arab American boy, the act might arouse some offense in our current liberal class. The same is also likely true of Obama setting records for use of the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers, pressuring the Yemeni government to imprison a journalist covering US war crimes, and his 2012 National Defense Authorization Act which included clauses permitting the indefinite detention of American citizens. The occasionally valiant effort from members of the Democratic and Republican members of congress to stop the ongoing, genocidal US supported war on Yemen, did not occur until Trump became president. New York Time’s commentator Nicholas Kristof waited until 2018 to level his public first criticisms of the war. Because of this lack of opposition, Obama was able to carry on supporting the world’s worst humanitarian crisis since he approved its initiation in 2015 for nearly 2 years, unrestrained by any substantive congressional opposition, media exposure, or outrage by US citizenry. Seeing as this tragic war has now claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, one wonders, what would Barack Obama have had to do for liberals to not forgive him?
Democrats like the Trickle Down Theory Too!
Seeing as the 44th president remains a popular, influential figure in US liberal circles despite the aforementioned transgressions and several more, it should be no surprise that his centrist compatriots also remain mostly free of judgement. His Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was still able to run for president in 2016 despite supporting the 2003 invasion of Iraq and being the primary force in moving Obama to militarily intervene in Libya in 2011 (an intervention conducted on false grounds and one that totally destabilized the country and region at large). Clinton’s only accountability for the Libya disaster was the delusional Benghazi hearings which obscured the real crime of the destruction of a nation.
Joseph Biden maintains enough liberal credibility to be currently representing the Democratic party in the 2020 electoral process. This, despite him having played an integral role in ensuring the Iraq War happened. Also apparently forgotten, or tolerated, are his support for the 1994 Crime Bill which led to mass incarceration and his backing of the 2005 bankruptcy bill which greatly contributed to the current student debt crisis. To the average MSNBC viewer, these three actions that alone destroyed millions of lives are mere blemishes on the record of an otherwise polite member of the political establishment.
In the present tense, and since November of 2016, there is one overriding factor that defines those who are forgiven by the latte sipping liberals and those who are not. That is, their level of opposition to Donald Trump and his brutish management of the US empire. There are many fantastic reasons to hate Donald Trump, but unfortunately, the MSNBC liberal’s hatred for The Orange Man is less policy based and more situated in the 45th president’s crudeness. After all, many of Trump’s greatest crimes were initiated under Obama. These include the wars that Trump has escalated in Yemen and Afghanistan, as well as the barbaric deportation policies. While Obama’s policies toward Iran and Cuba were decisively more diplomatic and less reckless than Trump’s, both were still predicated in a believed fiction that either of these countries ever warranted US belligerence to begin with. Even now, bipartisan rhetorical belligerence towards these two nations, along with Venezuela and many others, does much of the work in terms of justifying bellicose policies toward them.
A Final Analysis of the Liberal Propensity to Forgive
David Cross is a comedian whose work has often brought laughter into my life. His role as “Tobias Funke” on the sitcom, “Arrested Development,” is among the funniest character portrayals in television history. However, it was one of his recent bits that provoked this post. In the bit, he lampoons (in somewhat serious manner) the only recently disillusioned who is just now “starting to regret” their 2016 vote. The joke is of course about the tolerance for barbarism that a Trump voter would have to have after the litany of crimes committed in the past 4 years, to only now “start to regret” their vote for the neofascist. He is correct, of course. To be forgiving and accepting for three and a half years of the 45th president’s behavior toward the most vulnerable in our society and others is an exercise in immortality. A person with a sense of principles would have long since condemned the president and publicly declared their disapproval. However, given the average centrist Democrat’s capacity for forgiveness for the unforgivable, perhaps they should understand this inability to condemn horrific behavior. The MSNBC viewers’ impression of the many transgressions committed by liberal favorites and sins of former adversaries, attest to a fairly inconsistent practice of the principle of forgiveness and tolerance that could also be subject to a similar David Cross routine.
First, let’s review the unforgiven souls. An in depth study of this inconsistency reveals that the participation in Democratic elections by Ralph Nader and Jill Stein are actions for which they will be rendered persona non grata in liberal circles. Julian Assange and Wikileaks are pariahs for their service of illuminating the crimes of our leaders. Bernie Sanders and his supporters have been branded a monolithic band of sexist online bullies, despite mountains of countervailing evidence. This hatred for Sanders bleeds out of the audacity the aging socialist had displayed when daring to challenge Clinton’s preordained path to the 2016 Democratic nomination. The animosity also has roots in the false belief that Sanders did not do enough to help Hillary’s doomed campaign to defeat Trump. The list of the unforgiven shares many names with the list of victims scapegoated for centrist Democrats’ failures.
Some Questions Regarding the Limits of Forgiveness
Conversely, the American liberal either can be seen to ignore, forgive, or outright support some of the most heinous behavior. It is worth asking what the limits of this forgiveness and tolerance are. For the case of the Bush administration, that threshold is obviously quite high. If deceiving the nation into wars that have killed millions, made the world more dangerous, and destroyed American civil liberties is not sufficient enough for permanent “cancellation,” then what is? How many countries would Hillary Clinton have to destroy for her to lose her royalty status amongst Democrats? Are the destruction of Iraq and Libya insufficient criteria for such a fate? How many American children would Barack Obama have had to kill before he is not welcomed to appear on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee or Parts Unknown? To what degree could he be complicit in the genocide in Yemen to where liberals would question his wisdom or celebrity status? Should his persecution of whistleblowers, both domestic and foreign, render him unfit for production deals with Netflix? The average Democrat’s answer to this question is an affirmative “no.”
A Recipe for Inconsistency
The analysis reveals that the American liberal/centrist Democrat/neoliberal, or whichever term best describes this breed, is one whose capacity for forgiveness is one deeply infected with American exceptionalism, jingoism, and political opportunism. Their inconsistency betrays a deep lack of empathy for those outside of US borders that suffer due to US actions, be they sanctions or military. The fact that the trails of blood left by Bush, Bolton, Powell, Biden, Clinton, and Obama do not render these figures socially ostracized, marginalized, or otherwise “cancelled,” is a testament to the fact that American liberals, despite their virtue signaling rhetoric, do not actually value non-white lives. They value power, authority, cosmopolitan veneer, and loyalty to party above all. Once that is fully understood, it becomes clear why gross war crimes are tolerated and forgiven, while those responsible for heroic whistleblowing, participation in electoral politics, and challenging the heroes of the democratic establishment render one cancelled.
This Hypocrisy Does Not Work Both Ways
One cost of this hypocrisy is that it allows the Republican party and the right wing at large to capitalize on the inconsistency. Donald Trump rose to power in no small part by stomping on Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton for their Iraq War support. He called out Clinton for her use of “super predators” to describe young black men, and recently, he attacked Joe Biden for his role in the destructive 1994 Crime Bill. It simply does not matter that Trump is both a warmonger and an obvious racist. Hypocrisy holds little purchase in his world. He does not present himself as a defender of human rights or antiracist. The man is a sleazy businessman, and he embraces the inherent dishonesty in that role. He is a real estate speculator by trade, and no one is confused about the unprincipled nature of his politics. It’s just an inherent reality that Democrats (who at least feign concern for social justice) need to perform more consistently on these issues. This demands that forgiveness and cancellation be expressed on a consistent rubric.
Forgiveness and tolerance are noble virtues. However, when deposited in such a manner so inconsistent that they appear to be political opportunism, while demanding no penance for the most grievous of crimes, the virtues themselves are rendered meaningless. For all the accusations of “Cancel Culture” (a charge often leveled at the left), the culture at large should be reevaluating what transgressions render one “cancelled” vs. which are tolerated or forgiven. This honest analysis would ideally produce a culture that demands the perpetrators of the most heinous crimes seek atonement for their sins, while embracing those that challenge power structures.