Do not be surprised that this former DCCC chairman and Nancy Pelosi snuggle-bunny decided to pounce on the Tennessee Maus controversy. Just understand that the sloppy exercise in lame whataboutism is just another indication of what tactic the Democrats are readying for the mid-terms.

Republicans have mastered buzzwords that turn voters out by activating inner fear. But the traditional sloganeering – “tax and spend,” for example – is pablum compared to the existentialism of “cancel culture.” It captures the lurking intuition haunting many voters that they are slowly disappearing from the American mainstream; pushed to the margins of American life and culture, they suspect, by new forces ranging from inexorable demographic change to insistent political correctness. It doesn’t matter whether you and I agree with their assessments; they vote the way they feel, and the term “cancel culture” toxically distills their feelings.

Anyone else feeling the return of Democrat-copyrighted scapegoating that used to be the Angry White Man™ meme? That charge goes back, at least, to the 1970s when Norman Lear decided to hold that caricature up for national ridicule with the character of Archie Bunker in All In The Family. How’d that work out for Lear? Not only was the TV show a success, but Archie became the beloved character while Lear’s Leftwing hero (aka “meathead”) was reviled.

Oops.

What The Hill’s contributor, Steve Israel does here is strip away the meme line and expand it to all non-Left voters. They are people who live in fear, they are haunted by demographic change, and they vote from feelings. in contrast to the superior intellect of the Glorious Betters™ such as Steve. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t explicitly say white people because he doesn’t have to. First, because anti-white racism permeates the Leftwing glitterati and, second, because white is now the pejorative lobbed against anyone of any melanin level who is not sufficiently Woke.

(Larry) Elder’s crime, of course, is being conservative while black. This means that the LA Times can publish editorials about him being the “black face of white supremacy” and ignore an attack that would have been front-page news against a black Democrat.

But what about Steve’s charge that Rightwing Cancel Culture came to ban the comic book Maus in Tennessee?

This story is fake news: the book was swapped out from the 8th grade curriculum, not "banned." The board voted to find a better book for the Holocaust and said they'd even use Maus again if they don't find a good replacement.

Judd Legum is the Jussie Smollett of journalism. pic.twitter.com/To3UkjirBw

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) January 27, 2022

It was a controversy made up of whole cloth to serve Leftists like Steve and Democrat’s PR arm, aka “mainstream press”, a nice whataboutism tidbit to prove, PROVE that all bad stuff comes from the nefarious rightwing. Steve, though, has enough self-awareness he knew he couldn’t make that fly on Maus alone. No, he had to go back to his own alleged experience of 1970s parents in his town demanding that Slaughterhouse-Five be removed from the school library.

As if all of that, whether you agree with those parents’ objections or not, is somehow the equivalent of the firing of Gina Carano, the push to deplatform Joe Rogan and JK Rowling, firing not-sufficiently woke professors, or booksellers pressured to yank books deemed “dangerous” by Steve’s ideological fellow travelers from adults .

However, the real tell of Steve’s whine is his immediate pivot to the Village People’s Riot of Jan 6. He clumsily shoehorns the Democrats lovingly-embraced Reichstag fire into a discussion of destroying the careers and livelihoods of the unWoke.

What more grotesque display of cancel culture is there than invading the U.S. Capitol in a violent attempt to cancel the constitutional tabulation of ballots in the 2020 presidential election?

The word violent is doing a lot of heavy-lifting for Steverino there.

Sane people to Steve – Jan 6 is not about cancel culture.

He then launches into a tiny list of other so-called morally equivalent moves by the nefarious right in trying to cancel Whoopi Goldberg, Colin Kaepernick, “French Fries” and the Dixie Chicks. If the list weren’t so pitiful it would be worthy of a Woke Oscar for comedy. Though, we will address the charge about Whoopi — since it was only her firing being bantered about, not the cancel cudgel for The View regardless of how much that IQ-suck of a show deserves it.

Patriotic American citizens are tired of being told they must behave according to Marquis of Queensberry rules while the illiberal Left and its Democrat sycophants and acolytes do as they please. Understand this, Steve. We’ve read Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and we’re going to do Rule 4 to you and yours. As hard as we can.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers!

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