I think you make a fair and legitimate point about the difference between the culture — which does not require effective canceling to be nonetheless real — and cancellation itself. So that seems like a good distinction to me and one worth considering. But to end with an analogy to lynch mobs — even just with regard to the “sensitivity and patience of a Jim Crow era lynch mob” — is obscene, and surely you know it.

It isn’t that I’m accusing you of comparing twitter mobs to lunch mobs in terms of impact. Obviously you are not, although it’s still a messy analogy, likely interpreted that way, and thus, not very effective. But even the comparison to the two groups’ patience and sensitivity is insane. Either you have no idea about lynch mobs’ mentalities (not just their actions, but their character), or you do, and you are incapable of discerning the diffeence.

The lynch mobs you think it is OK to conjure here to make a point about people who dared to get a shitty comic like Shane Gillis yanked from SNL, among others, didn’t just murder people. Their “sensitivity” and patience was such that they murdered people, mostly black, for simply showing insufficient deference to white men on the street. Or for accusations of criminal wrongdoing, but without any evidence whatsoever, and without the patience to wait for an actual trial to to determine guilt and mete out legitimate punishment (Not that any such trial would have been fair in those days, but you get my point).

They had literal gatherings around the bodies of hanging and blowtorched men, served chicken salad and lemonade, made community events out of them, spectacles where ads were taken out in papers beforehand to ensure maximum turnout…they cut off body parts as souvenirs and took pictures which became the equivalent of trading cards. That’s how sensitive and patient they were.

So please, make your point — much of which I find persuasive, even if I think your anti-wokeness shtick is wearing a bit thin — but to do it with such absurd, inherently venal comparisons as this is to demonstrate your own ignorance of history and utter lack of perspective.