People cancel each other for one of two things, right? Either they’re suspected of having done something bad, something they’re denying but the allegations are credible. Or, and this is so starkly different: they are pundits baldfacedly spouting evil. They’re using their platform and their megaphone to stoke the flames of hate and persecution and oppression. They’re not denying it, they’re proud of it. We can’t treat these two things the same.
But from that second in the garden, we humans were all cursed with foot-in-mouth disease. People say misunderstandable things or there’s hearsay or there’s “can you believe they allegedly said such-and-such (or so I’ve been told)”.
These categories aren’t clear cut. I’ve seen people be canceled for supposedly having said the opposite of what they are really saying and fighting for, while the most vile demagogues manage to slither away with dog whistles and transparent “I’ve just got a few concerns” slogans.
So being a thinking human being isn’t easy. There is no silver bullet and we always have to case-by-case it. And it’s only with the full awareness of how we’re condemned to case-by-casing it and our lack of a universal solution that I put forth the following rule of thumb that works sometimes:
Argue for or against the idea rather than against the person. That’s not to say that every idea should be debatable in some cacophonous “marketplace” of random junk. See, this is what I didn’t want. Overstating things.