What’s getting in the way of my message, rather, is how some readers are triggered by certain labels. You’re projecting onto me a preoccupation with mere labels, whereas the article is about the endpoint of liberalism, based on the existential impetus of civilization. I’m not focused on the labels, contrary to what you said. I’m using certain words to generalize, but I’m talking about the underlying historical patterns.
You can say the patterns aren’t as broad as I’m suggesting, or that I’ve used the wrong labels. But what label should be used to refer to the recent left-wing form of extreme political correctness? You don’t like “woke” and you don’t like “the left”? Are you sure you just don’t want anyone talking about the liberal extremity of political correctness? And wouldn’t that evince the oversensitivity I’m positing? All the labels will be fraught because of the culture war.
Regarding conservatives who take comfort in this criticism of liberalism, I’d point them to my long series that annihilates conservatism as a legitimate concern. There’s no such thing as a stronger criticism of conservatism than the one I’ve made consistently and at length (summarized through the link below).
You say, “in the sense that you mean, there’s no such thing [as cancel culture]! It’s a label slapped on when convenient to divert blame…” But that conflates the culture with the mere label. It’s what you think I’m doing even though you and some other commenters are the ones doing it. It looks to me like a projection because I’m not so concerned with labels. I loathe political correctness because it amounts to censorship, whereas I hold art to be sacred. Maybe that has the downside that I sometimes use labels that offend certain readers who prefer to be politically correct. The mere labels trigger some readers, preventing them from appreciating the overall message.
Cancel culture, though, is the use of quotas and shifting liberal mores to exclude some folks from the public square or from the job market. It’s a performative, tribal culture of virtue signaling that stands in for a genuine pursuit of social justice. It’s superficial justice for infantilized, duped, young neoliberal consumers who ignore the harm they’re doing to the planet by giving runaway capitalism and plutocracy a pass.
I’ll be writing something else on this topic to clarify my stance, given these critical comments. I agree, though, that it’s hard to communicate during a culture way that gives everyone itchy trigger fingers.
