All of this is why I find myself listening closely to the rhetoric I use, and watching closely what I write, NOT so as to be less “offensive” and certainly not just petulantly and spitefully trying to be more so, but to indicate to all who hear or read my words: “How you feel about what I say, is not the basis for my saying what I say. Take it any way you want, but I will, and do, and will continue to, say what I want to say.”
No more disclaimers, no more apologetic asides, no more “this is not to say that…”, no more back-pedaling while looking around the room for the moral outrage… say what you mean, mean what you say, and DON’T APOLOGIZE FOR IT. As soon as you do that, the snitches have you right where they wanted you, and won’t let go.
It is time to press the advantage. PC tyranny has been dealt a series of body blows, and is beginning to devour itself the way all failing fake-movement behavioral fads always do. It is not the time to become intentionally offensive, nor is this a time to go seeking people to offend just for the sheer childish spite of it. That would be the conduct of losers, and free speech is not losing.
But this isn’t over, not by a long stretch. The behavior of cornered and desperate cowards is the most predictably vicious of all, and the fight against free speech has been a coward’s fight all along. Now is the time to watch out, not in fear but in confident and self-assured vigilance.
We must learn to project coming in, that we are not afraid of being denounced. That we recognize denunciation as the conniving and cynical opportunism that it is, that we do not take its content seriously, but that the denouncers ought to damn well take the intent of those they try and fail to denounce quite seriously, and that Denunciation Culture won’t be tolerated.
I don’t know how anybody in the public sector or the tech industries is going to pull this off. Maybe something to do with why I’m not on government payroll or in tech? But neither, is the majority of the people in everyday American life. The rest of us, and many have long since mastered the skill sets, must show that such tactics and such intentions as seeking to wreck reputations and ruin lives over words, are no match for those who are not afraid of cowards who denounce.
The currency and the fuel of Denunciation Culture has been raw FEAR all along. Stop being afraid of these people. I know I damn sure ain’t, and anyone who disapproves of anything I have to say can do what they like to try and stop me, and fail at it. Enough of us let enough of the informers and the snitches and the whiners in our purview know that, and damn well stand our ground against them, and sooner or later they’ll grow up, or slither back into whatever rathole they oozed out of.
