ANALYZING THE PUNISHMENT CYCLES.

Every day comes a new development making breaking out of the punishment cycles of the grim strategy outcome more difficult.  It's too late, though, suggests Craig "Streetwise Professor" Pirrong for turning the other cheek.

Though he’s not really worth the pixels, the hue and cry over the suspension (not firing–yet, anyways) of the beyond execrable Jimmy Kimmel compels me to respond. A reply is warranted primarily because of the alleged hypocrisy of those who criticized (and criticize) cancel culture yet called for and applauded his current hiatus (again, apparently temporary). This implicates issues far more important than the fate of a single media twat. It is essentially an attempt to beat back a social revolution that threatens those who occupy the commanding heights in media, academia, and government.

First, the criticism is a pitch perfect example of the “no punchbacks,” “no fair mommy, he hit me back!” mentality of the left. Deferring to this mentality out of fear of being called hypocritical is a recipe for submission to abuse into the infinite future. In a repeated prisoners’ dilemma, which accurately characterizes politics generally and current American politics specifically, tit-for-tat (i.e., punchbacks, and bigtime) is an evolutionarily successful strategy. Always cooperating in the face of defection (i.e., bending over when your adversary screws you) is a strategy that ensures extinction.

It's worse than that, dear reader.  The evolutionary success of tit-for-tat is in rewarding cooperative behavior with cooperative behavior and keeping the cooperation going.  A few punchbacks as a message to an opportunistic defector might work.  Restoring cooperation once it breaks down is hard.  And here we are.

Practitioners of Liberating Tolerance made those rules, didn't they?  "[W]e're in the punishment cycle of a grim strategy equilibrium.  It came to this, though, when the Nash equilibrium of reasoned discourse became one more bourgeois (that was a sneer word back in the day) convention to be deconstructed."

Here's how Professor Pirrong breaks down what has followed.

It is therefore an issue of whether it is right to object to, and in some cases sanction or even suppress, speech. And here the difficulty is that like almost everything in life, categoricals are counterproductive. There are trade-offs. Judgments must be made.

That is, the costs of some kind of speech exceed the benefits. The question is deciding when that occurs–and crucially, who decides. And that is the real issue.

The reality is that as the result of its successful march through the institutions, the left has achieved a near monopoly on deciding. And it has decided that speech that deviates from (today’s!) leftist orthodoxy is unacceptably costly, and that virtually any action (not just spoken or written words) that conforms to that orthodoxy is sacrosanct. “Your speech is violence! My violence is speech!” With “your” being conservative/right, and “my” being progressive/radical/left. And it enforces this decision with myriad coercive means. Social ostracism. Intense harassment. Deletion from social media. Expulsion from school. Loss of job and income.

The counterrevolution against cancel culture is driven by a deep conviction among a large number of people that this monopoly of social force and the means it employs are wrong and must be overthrown. They are wrong because they enforce an Animal Farm all-animals-are-equal-but-some-animals-are-more-equal-than-others hierarchy that violates the equality of citizens, and the equality of human beings. It is wrong because it is fundamentally coercive, and applies this coercion to behavior that those who are not ideological leftists strongly believe is not only not harmful to others, but is in fact in many cases is quite beneficial both to individuals and society. (Religious devotion and speech are examples of the latter).

In brief, the beef is “who died and made you God?” At root, it is an argument about social equality–of which equality before the law is only a part.

Thus, in the end it comes down to what is beyond the pale, and who decides what is beyond the pale. Vast swathes of people who have not been privileged to be deciders, and who have been persecuted by those who are so privileged, have taken it upon themselves to decide that what Jimmy Kimmel said about Kirk’s murder and responsibility for it is far, far beyond the pale. And that what all too many doctors, “educators” (gag), government employees have said is far, far beyond the pale. And that they should pay a price for these transgressions.

He notes, "The argument has always been about where the pale lies, who establishes it, and who enforces it."

Once upon a time we had bourgeois norms that people in political and intellectual life respected.  No more, and Pajamas Media's Scott Pinsker is enjoying the grim strategy outcome.

From the radical left’s point of view, they’re still defenders of democracy, heroes of the republic, and American patriots… even when they tried lawfare, bogus legal charges, Cancel Culture, and decidedly non-democratic means to destroy the Evil Orange Monster.

It’s not their fault, you see. Trump made ‘em do it.

But their one logical inconsistency is now biting the Donkeys on their jackarse: For some strange reason, it never dawned on them that the other side could use the same exact tactics against them.

(And as far as logical oversights go, yikes! That one’s a doozy.)

It’s weird. Be like a husband cheating on his wife with the next-door neighbor, and then being flabbergasted when she files for divorce and jumps into the arms of another man: “How could she?!”

The Democratic Party is shocked. SHOCKED, I tell you!

Megan (formerly Jane Galt) McArdle takes the loftier stance.

Admittedly, there’s a certain insincerity to the left’s belated discovery of the importance of free speech. I have had to stop drinking beverages while scrolling social media, lest I choke on my own mordant laughter as I watch prominent cancellation artists — and their accomplices — make an about-face and start saluting the First Amendment. Apparently the old justifications, like “freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences,” don’t sound so compelling when your opponents are mouthing them — and doling out the consequences.

However silly progressives look, at least they are now pointed in the right direction, while conservatives are headed in the wrong one.

Our fidelity to unnatural principles, such as free speech, is the foundation of civilization today. You cannot run a modern industrial society on tribal loyalties and personal judgments that work well for a small band of foragers. For that, you need broad and impartial principles that equally apply to everyone, and are equally enforced by everyone, even against their own.

When those principles are working, it’s easy to forget how fragile that negotiated truce is, and how much we need it. Our ancient instincts reassert themselves, and we look for ways to weasel out of the social contract. After all, no matter how much lip service we pay to principles, it feels gloriously right to punish those odious outsiders who have offended our most sacred values. And it feels hideously wrong to clip the wings of our wonderful allies, who have merely violated the primitive superstitions of some lesser tribe. So we invent reasons that this is different.

That’s how some progressives came to believe that they could use the outsize power they had amassed on social media to rewrite the rules unilaterally. Social justice was different; free speech was a tool of the oppressor, so naturally they granted immunity to themselves while cracking down on the other side. They are now discovering where that ends.

Having abandoned the clear and unforgiving principles of free speech, they have little to protect them now except a child’s plaint: That’s not what I meant! Conservatives will be equally unprotected when the worm turns again and Democrats have the FCC at their disposal. We could spend years battering each other until there is nothing left of our tattered democracy. Or we could choose to restore the old truce.

By “we” I don’t mean some vague, collective “we.” I mean you and me. And I’m afraid we can’t just shout about the horrible behavior of people we disagree with — very satisfying, and very ineffective. Your side is the one you can influence, so that’s where you should concentrate your fire, even if the other side’s behavior seems objectively worse. If that seems like unilateral disarmament, well, how’s the escalating game of tit-for-tat working out?

That's fine by me, although I will accept these terms. "Look, the Angry Left could sue for peace any time they want.  A simple apology for all the 'Neanderthal' or 'deplorable' talk might go a long way.  Fail to still that pendulum, enjoy the war of all against all."