If this is cancel culture, I’m all for it
As a former denizen of Orange County, California, I can attest to what the place used to be like back in the early 90s when I lived there. I can think of nowhere on earth where the starched and staid corporate drone blended more homogeneously with the suntanned volleyball-and-bikini set. It was like a yuppy heaven that was wall to wall Republican. Even so, the decidedly rightwing politics was so dialled down it almost seemed nonexistent to my liberal sentiments. If Orange County shared politics with Montgomery County it was all but invisible to me.
Today Orange County has come to symbolise the inexorable leftward shift in American political affiliation. A county that was once home to Richard Nixon now contains a slight liberal majority. There may yet be enough Republicans there to fill a MAGA venue, but the political climate isn’t nearly as welcoming as it might have been 30 years ago. Recently certain toxic Republicans found that out the hard way.
After learning that the two speakers were to be Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Laguna Hills event center canceled plans to host an “America First” rally on July 17. “We just want to stay clear of that,” Javad Mirtavoosi, general manager of Pacific Hills Banquet & Event Center, said by phone Friday. “As soon as we found out who the speakers were we immediately canceled it,” Mirtavoosi added.
With an almost Soviet-era paranoia about image, Greene’s campaign lied about the account of the cancellation. She claimed they’re still trying to find an Orange County venue for the same day. However a flier announcing the event at the now cancelled venue proves that Greene is trying to cover up the embarrassing fact that she and her poisonous cohort simply aren’t wanted there.
In an orgy of performative outrage and counterfeit victimhood, the MAGA-heads are already screaming “cancel culture.” The tired claim is that the Constitution is being savagely violated. Once again it is not. Implicit in the Constitutional promise of freedom of speech is freedom from speech. In other words, if you’re going to lie you’re not going to do it in my house.
It’s amusing how many purported lawyers in Congress still don’t understand what the Constitution actually says about the sacred American right to free speech. The Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech.” It doesn’t say I can’t kick you out of my house if I don’t like your scumbag political lies.
If refusing to listen to the hate-speech, conspiracy theories, prevarications and calumnies of the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz is “cancel culture” then I’m all for it. I don’t doubt that some venue in Orange County might give the toxic twins a place to stand and spew their lies, but it’s nice to know they don’t have to. As America moves left, more doors will slam in the faces of Republicans. I relish the thought. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.