We All Know Cancel Culture is Ridiculous

Cancel culture is beyond out-of-control now.

The latest casualties have been Gina Carano of the Mandalorian series (fired by Disney) and Chris Harrison, longtime host of the reality TV show The Bachelor (fired by ABC). Carano was fired because she compared Republicans to Jews during the Holocaust, which insinuated that Democrats were the Nazis. Boom. See ya. You’ve been cancelled. As for Harrison, he (somewhat) defended a bachelorette for having an Old South-themed party in 2018 that celebrated the antebellum era. His argument was that having it in 2018 wasn’t as racially insensitive a look as it would be if she had it in 2021, post-George Floyd-era. In other words, having the party in 2018 could be understandably done out of ignorance, but in 2021 it would be tone-deaf. Oh, and he also happened to say two forbidden words: “woke police”. Boom. See ya, Chris. You’ve been cancelled.

Now, it can be reasonably argued that what both of these people said wasn’t the most perfect, sensitive and responsible thing ever said. But, really, they’re going to be fired, just like that? No second chances? No talking things out? No apologies accepted? No forgiveness whatsoever?

At the rate we’re going, in two or three years, every single person on the planet is going to be cancelled. Because, as we all can admit, we don’t always say the most perfect things, especially when we are speaking freely. So what is the message, then? Never speak freely ever? Make sure everything that comes out of your mouth gets run through a complex filter of political correctness and is, thus, the most safe and boring and banal thing that you can possibly say? If that is the case, then I guess we can say goodbye to the 1^st amendment, goodbye freedom. Goodbye to saying anything even the least bit interesting. Doing so would be too risky.

Let’s face it: no matter what side of the political spectrum you’re on—right or left or somewhere in between—we all know that this cancel culture is absolutely ridiculous. We also all know that this is NOT progress; if anything, it’s being used as a way to distract from and avoid true progress in society. This road that we’re on will lead us to nothing but a dystopic, near-Orwellian-like culture where everybody is either not allowed to speak freely (because they have the scarlet letter ‘C’ on them, for ‘cancelled’) or because they’re scared shitless to speak freely lest they get that scarlet letter C branded on their foreheads.

That’s right: everybody knows this is where cancel culture is going to get us.

So why do we keep doing it, then?

Well, part of the problem, I think, is that we’re not really doing it. It’s the corporations that are doing it. In Gina Carano’s case, she was fired by Disney. And, incidentally, in Chris Harrison’s case, he was also fired by Disney, which owns ABC, the network that The Bachelor is on. But it’s not just Disney who is doing this. Today, pretty much every corporation across the board is doing it. Why? Because, by nature, a corporation is a sociopathic, spineless, inhuman coward. And, no, I’m not trying to be one of those punkers who rants and raves that “CORPORATIONS ARE EVIL! Oi! Oi! Oi!” What I mean is that this is the nature of the corporation. Its allegiance is to one thing and one thing only: the bottom line. If there is a threat to that bottom line, no matter how remote, it eliminates that threat. The corporation doesn’t give a damn about giving anybody second chances. All they care about is that bottom line. If you stand in the way of that bottom line? Forget your ass. Boom. You’re gone.

Now, the main reason why a corporation is like this, at least from what I understand about them (and I’m admittedly rather ignorant when it comes to the corporate world) is because a corporation is beholden to its shareholders and shareholders, by law, have the right to sue a corporation if that corporation isn’t doing anything and everything in its power to ensure that its bottom line is as profitable as possible (look up derivative lawsuits for more about this). This is why, if a person working for that corporation says something that may hurt the corporation’s image (like Carano or Harrison), well, then, BOOM, you’re gone, no second thoughts about it.

Thus, we see why corporations are the biggest spineless, cowardly wuss-bags in existence. Again, not because “THEY’RE EVIL!!! Oi! Oi! Oi!”, but because, by law, they must be slaves to the bottom line. The bottom line is their god.

So, what I’m getting at here is that “cancel culture” is a corporate-driven movement and it is a glaring indication that we have allowed the corporate world to obtain waaaaaay too much power over us. Basically, the more corporate power that exists, the more scared we are to speak our minds, because the sad reality is that the majority of the people out there, especially in the public eye, are beholden to a corporation in some way or another, whether they work directly for one or they use one (like Twitter, Facebook, Google etc.) for marketing purposes and/or, of course, to speak their mind.

Long story short: you can’t blame the corporations for cancelling everyone. It’s their nature to be like this. It’s actually our fault for allowing them to possess so much power over us. We need to remember that corporations are inhuman entities that we created. They should be slaves to US, not the other way around. It’s time we take back control and say enough is enough. This cancel culture has got to stop. If we, instead, allow the sociopathic entity that is the corporation to override what we as people actually want (i.e. free speech), then it will be our downfall as a society.

More articles by Matt Burns on cancel culture and mass censorship:

INDIVIDUALISM VS. COLLECTIVISM: the bad acid-like trip I experienced during the 2021 Superbowl halftime show

Pride Comes Before the Fall

The Cloak of Woke

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MATT BURNS is the author of THE WOMAN AND THE DRAGON, which is a novella loosely based on chapter 12 in The Book of Revelation. He’s also the author of JOHNNY CRUISE, WEIRD MONSTER and a memoir called GARAGE MOVIE: MY ADVENTURES MAKING WEIRD FILMS. Check out these books (and many more) on his Amazon author page HERE.

INDIVIDUALISM VS. COLLECTIVISM: the bad acid-like trip I experienced during the 2021 Super Bowl halftime show

Let’s face it: the 2021 Super Bowl halftime show, performed by “The Weeknd”, was creepy as all hell. There were dark angels with red eyes falling from the sky, pentagrams on the stage, guitarists wearing demonic masks with devil horns, dancers with gauzed face-masks that made them look like burn victims and creepy subliminal messages in the background that said, “touch,” “enough,” “voice,” “you” and “alone”. Never before has a Super Bowl halftime show been so in-your-face with satanic imagery. In fact, it was as in-your-face as ever. I mean, why are we not talking about this, at least maybe a little bit? The Super Bowl checked all the PC boxes, what with all its racial diversity and honoring of the frontline medical workers and what-have-you…but, HELLO, what about the elephant in the stadium?! The giant satanic ritual that was the halftime show! What’s THAT all about? We’re just going to let that slide because the Super Bowl checked all other politically-correct boxes?

Sorry, I’m already getting a little excited here.

And, also, with all of the above being said, I’d be very dishonest, not to mention fake with my outrage, if I didn’t admit that I found a lot of the show very cool-looking—all the complex lighting designs, the synchronous dancing choreography etc. I’m not really sure what that says about the state of my soul—when I’m genuinely impressed by a show that’s so dark—but maybe I ought to visit the local church and douse myself with holy water as soon as possible. Well, shit, maybe it makes sense, though: the devil has a way of mesmerizing and hypnotizing you with his powers. He uses all the bright lights and the spectacular art design and the catchy music (I literally haven’t been able to get friggin’ Weeknd’s song “Blinding Lights” out of my head for the past 48 hours) to seduce you…

But, alas, I’m already drifting off into a tangent here. Let’s get back on track.

So, ok, by the time I got to the finale of the halftime show, I began to almost trip out completely, almost like I had dropped some bad acid, only I didn’t. I saw all the dancers, dancing in unison, with masks over their mouths and gauze on their face. What came to me was not a vision of the future per se, but a vision of a possible future, a version of the future that “dark forces” would like to see. What do I mean by “dark forces”? Well, seeing that the halftime show was filled with satanic symbolism, I guess you might say the dark forces are opposite of the big guy in the sky. Let’s call him the big guy in the underworld, the king of h-e-double-hockey-sticks. But if we want to put this into more “physical world” terms, I guess what I saw in that finale was a vision of a communist society where everybody is masked, no longer has a voice and no longer has an individual identity. Instead of living with personal liberty, people are “dancing” in unison with one another. There is no longer any individual; there is just a face-less, voice-less collective of conformity.

Now, some may call me overly paranoid or borderline-insane (wouldn’t be the first time), but I do see this communist agenda potentially being imposed on us right at this very moment. Let me be clear that I’m by no means “anti-mask” and, for cry eye, I appreciate the power of the COVID virus, but it’s almost like everybody being mandated to wear a mask in public is symbolic of something larger. It’s like a dehumanizing shackle that takes away both our individual identity and our individual liberty and turns us into a collective. In other words, the mask mandate is symbolic of communism being forced upon us, albeit all done with the justification of protecting us from a virus, but that’s what it seems to be: an assault of communism.

So, it’s almost like there is a struggle taking place right now, between what America has always been about—individualism—and what “darker forces” want America to become: a dehumanized collective of robots dancing in unison with each other, which is the vision I experienced during the finale of the halftime show. Throw in big government telling us what we can and cannot do all the time, the ravenous “cancel culture” and the unprecedented amounts of mass censorship we’ve been witnessing these days and what we have is an epic struggle between human liberty vs. human slavery, basically.

Am I reading too far into all this? Possibly. But think about it: once we get the COVID virus under control, will we just go back to our old ways of liberty and individualism? Or has the real intention been to basically reprogram us into thinking individualism is selfish and collectivism is not just selfless but noble?

To put this another way, the COVID virus has essentially triggered a major identity crisis in America. What we’ve been grappling with is how far do we sacrifice our own personal liberty for the sake of the collective? Where is the line in the sand that we won’t cross? When do we say enough is enough? These are tough questions because the virus is, in fact, real and serious. But what if, after two or three years, we suddenly wake up and realize America is more or less dead? Personal liberty? Gone. Individual identity? Gone. Boom…we’re all of a sudden a collectivist culture, we’ve been fundamentally changed. How did this happen? Well, it happened quick and it happened while we were all in a frenzy about a virus!

Therefore, I guess what we need to do is be careful. We can’t let “dark forces” use COVID as an excuse to assault and basically rape us of our liberties. It’s a tough balancing act for sure…to what extent do we need to compromise liberty for the sake of the collective? COVID is real, we need to be responsible, but we also, at the same time, need to make sure we preserve our liberty in the process. This is easier said than done, but maybe once we realize that this liberty is, indeed, at stake, then we can maybe at least keep a close eye on it and not let it slip away from us forever.

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MATT BURNS is the author of THE WOMAN AND THE DRAGON, which is a novella loosely based on chapter 12 in The Book of Revelation. He’s also the author of JOHNNY CRUISE, WEIRD MONSTER and a memoir called GARAGE MOVIE: MY ADVENTURES MAKING WEIRD FILMS. Check out these books (and many more) on his Amazon author page HERE.

Pride Comes Before the Fall

   

 Pride goes before destruction,

    a haughty spirit before a fall.

-- Proverbs 16:18

While I was listening to the Adam Carolla podcast the other night, Adam was telling the story of how his good buddy (and long-time radio show/podcast co-host) Dr. Drew had recently gotten a strike against his YouTube account for a video he made about COVID. This video apparently broke YouTube’s rules about “medical misinformation” and they had to promptly delete the video. Dr. Drew is now essentially under probation and if he posts any more videos that break YouTube’s “medical misinformation” rules, he will get two strikes on his account. After three strikes? Well, his entire YouTube channel will be terminated.

What, exactly, was this forbidden video about? Nothing incendiary: just a few doctors talking about COVID treatments. Not only is Dr. Drew a board-certified physician, but he also just had COVID and wanted to talk about what he learned from the virus. Apparently, at some point in the video, one of the doctors must have said something that is not quite in line with what the World Health Organization says and, according to YouTube, any medical information that goes against what the WHO says is deemed “medical misinformation”. So, if a doctor, for example, wanted to talk about, say, Vitamin D or Zinc or Vitamin C or Vitamin A as being beneficial supplements for a COVID prophylactic and/or therapy, that could be deemed medical misinformation. In other words, there is hardly any room for alternative discussion, alternative ideas, alternative prophylactics, alternative treatments, alternative anything. YouTube says that what the WHO says is gospel. And that’s the key word here: gospel, because YouTube is basically playing God. Let me explain what I mean by that:

Dr. Drew’s censored video is just one example of an ongoing trend today where Big Tech companies like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Google are all trying to control information, which is another way of saying they’re all trying to control what is and isn’t truth, which is, in turn, another way of saying they’re trying to play God.

Indeed, all these Big Tech companies are guilty of committing one of the deadliest of the seven deadly sins: that of Pride, or Hubris—whatever you’d like to call it. You’re guilty of pride when you’re trying to play God and it’s not an overstatement to say that this is exactly what is happening in the Big Tech world right now. Companies like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Google etc. are bursting at the seams with hubris.

Now, their excuse, of course, is that their efforts to control information, mainly through censorship, are well-intentioned. It’s being done in the name of squelching misinformation or hate speech or speech that may incite violence or that kind of thing. But it’s all bullshit. What we are seeing is fascism rearing its ugly head in America and what is fascism but Pride, pure and simple. It’s PRIDE.

But, yes, fascism has to be sneaky, especially since it wasn’t really that long ago since it last reared its ugly head in Germany. This time around, it has to disguise itself as being…well, a good thing; otherwise, everybody would be able to immediately see it for what it is. So, it talks a big game about trying to stop misinformation, hate speech, government insurrection, violence and what-have-you, or, in other words, it tries to convince people that it is an anti-fascist movement when, in fact, it is the exact opposite: fascist.

So that’s the deal. What we are witnessing today is a censorship movement that claims to be an attempt to weed out all the evil in the world but this movement is, in fact, the evil itself. That’s right: this is not exaggeration. It’s time we call this movement out for what it actually is and that is pure hubris, an arrogant display of the Sin of Pride and, thus, evil.

But never fear. One shouldn’t get too upset about all this, because, if history is any indication, Pride always comes before the Fall. We saw this with Icarus who flew too close to the sun and got his wings burnt. We saw this with Adam and Eve who ate from the tree of Forbidden Knowledge. We saw it with Oedipus, Dr. Faustus, Dr. Frankenstein, Napoleon, Hitler…heck, we saw it with Satan himself. There is no doubt in my mind that this egregious assault on free speech done under the guise of controlling dangerous “misinformation” will result in the fall of the Big Tech companies and also the fall of those politicians and so-called “journalists” and pundits and corporations and universities who are enabling or even outright cheerleading these companies. Twitter, Facebook, Google, YouTube…they’re bursting at the seams with hubris at the moment, but they are all going to fall soon enough. One way or another, their days of possessing so much concentrated power—near-monopolistic power—are numbered. As we have learned from history, such hubris has never been able to sustain itself for very long and this will be yet another example for the history books.

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MATT BURNS is the author of THE BURNZO PAPERS: Selected Articles & Essays and also the novels JOHNNY CRUISE, THE WOMAN AND THE DRAGON and WEIRD MONSTER. In addition, he’s published a memoir called GARAGE MOVIE: MY ADVENTURES MAKING WEIRD FILMS. Check out these books (and many more) on his Amazon author page HERE.