I keep thinking about that Open Letter in Harpers today. I keep getting angrier about it. In a way, they say let us cancel you before you cancel us. They don't want to hear from the recently amplified un-credentialed people who somehow dare speak back to them.

They gave vague examples to avoid saying overtly what we are all supposed to understand. They want the freedom to say things that are oppressive, hurtful, silencing, and painful to other people without other people speaking back because uncredentialled voices are cancel culture

They are people in power telling people on the downside of power to stop being so damn noisy. We're tired of your insolence and your demands. Shut the fuck up. And you better shut the fuck up because look at all these names of people telling you your discourse is unacceptable.

There is so much wrong with their Miltonian adherence to the battle between error and truth. Truth does not always win, not with bots, bad actors, and feckless propagandists. How often has truth won the battle with oppressive ideology?

And here's the thing, the oppressive ideologies of homophobia, transphobia, sexism, racism, ableism, and everything I forget are not just ideas, they are acts. This so-called battle of ideas is played out on our bodies, not between the pages of a magazine.

Take that racist nurse who lost her job. How many Black patients have been in pain and denied pain meds because she has racist ideas about Black people not feeling the same pain as white people? How many Black people have died because of her racist beliefs carried out at work?

How many Black people do not get to engage in a battle of ideas with her because her rHhacism killed them?

Take that teacher who posted a noose on Facebook. How many Black children were poorly taught & discouraged by her? How many has she denied the opportunity to battle ideas

Take J. K. Rowling who blithely swoons around Twitter dispensing transphobic bullshit So how many young people will kill themselves because she discouraged parents from allowing kids to express their reality? For her it is academic, for them it is not

The battles of cancel culture have been going on forever. The only thing different is now people they know are being canceled. They are used to being the ones stamping canceled on other people and other ideas.

When I think of Sandra Bland, John Crawford, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, Breonna Taylow, and the achingly painful list of people killed because of an "idea" that these people think should be protected from consequence in a free exchange, I want to scream

Racism is not just an idea. It is an act. In fact, it is a deluge of daily acts that determine who gets a good education & who doesn't, who gets good health care & who doesn't, who gets clean air & who doesn't, who can enjoy a night out in peace & who can't, who lives & who dies.

Sexism is not just an idea. It is an act. It is a flood of daily acts that determine who gets promoted & who doesn't. who gets to go to Safeway at midnight & who doesn't, who is safe taking the bus home at night & who isn't, who has control of their body & who doesn't

Homophobia and transphobia are more than ideas. They are acts that limit people's safety in public and private, that allow or disallow people from being their true selves, whether people can be with those they love or not, and ultimately whether they live or die

Ableism is more than an idea. It's a series of acts or lack of action that shuts people with disabilities out of jobs and public spaces, that discounts and silences their opinions, and in Arizona right now, whether they live or die if they get COVID.

Ethnocentrism kills. Anti-Muslim, Anti-Christianism, and Anti-Semitism kill. There is no ideology of privileging people that is not accompanied by actions and decisions that play out not on the Miltonian battlefield, but in the lives and deaths of the people.