I ABJURE CANCEL CULTURE, BUT NOT AS MUCH AS I ABJURE PUBLICLY AGREEING WITH HIM.

Just when you thought 2020 couldn't get any weirder, you get a bunch of people who think their credentials alone (note: they don't, not any more than having a house makes you middle class) give them Moral Authority to stand up for what used to be bourgeois conventions with a public letter in Harper's (once upon a time the Very Holy Writ of Boston Culture) which worked just fine until some of the signatories notice that some of the other signatories were guilty of Wrong Think.  Then it became stuff for Twitchy.  "It seems as though some of the cool kids didn’t know some uncool kids, like the notoriously transphobic <sarc> J.K. Rowling would be signing too. So in a piece about the open exchange of ideas, signatories are getting called out for allowing the open exchange of ideas by other signatories."  The good news is, a few people understand that an open exchange of ideas is more productive when there is disagreement.

New Yorker staff writer Malcom Gladwell, another signee, also responded to [J. F.] Boylan, [of New York's Times, of course she's going to carp, if she doesn't want to be the next one purged] observing that he “signed the Harpers letter because there were lots of people who also signed the Harpers letter whose views I disagreed with.”

“I thought that was the point of the Harpers letter,” he added.

That's obviously a repressive form of tolerance, and it must be suppressed.  Note, though, it's Vox, where the soy- and estrogen-fueled virtue signalling is causing dissension in the office.

Vox editor and cofounder Matthew Yglesias is drawing public backlash from colleagues after signing an open letter endorsing free speech and pushing back against the "stifling atmosphere" in some corners of the media.

Vox critic at large Emily VanDerWerff tweeted a letter she said she had sent to Vox editors stating that Yglesias's decision to sign the letter—which she said was also signed by several "anti-trans" critics—made her feel "less safe" at the publication.

In Woke World, words are violence, therefore words appearing to concur with the words of people this critic feels largely criticized by suffice to make her less safe.  Than what?  Having the statement appear without any endorsements, in which case she could gripe that silence is also violence, in this case the silent concurrence of office mates (or whatever you use to describe conference calls these days) that might quietly agree with J. K. Rowling?  Undermine them with mockery.  Read Ed "Captain Ed" Morrissey for the details.

Reason's Jesse Singal, who also signed the letter, and is not backing down, offers a defense of the statement, whether as an endorsement of traditional norms of discourse, a rebuke of the notion of liberating tolerance, or simply to tell the crazies to get a grip.  "The people furious at this letter largely have genuine ideological problems with liberal norms and laws regarding free speech." Yes, which is why you have a populist insurgency in the first place.  Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen, on the other hand, suggests that the letter might be better understood as an attempt by remnants of that Credentialed Class to exert their authority.  "So in the Straussian sense it is actually a letter about the limits and impotence of true free speech, and the need to be constrained by social consensus."  Ultimately, consensus is emergent, and mob authority or Expert Authority ultimately runs into reality.

The best thing to do might be what Mitch "Shot in the Dark" Berg suggests, "Part of me thinks that if we just step back for a bit, the American left will just destroy itself and leave the rest of us alone."  Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.