Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer.
I first wrote about the loss of values in American politics in 2011, with "Civility: What's Not To Like?". But "civility" was not the first word to transform from being a value to being offensive. I wrote in 2017: For me, "it started with "tolerance...I was surprised to learn that tolerance is not universally considered to be a virtue. (Tolerance was imagined to be synonymous with approval - approval of gays, of Muslims, of sin.) Then, I learned that "compromise" is not universally considered to be a virtue, either. (Compromise was imagined to require a surrender of principle.)" In that article I wrote about how "Now Kindness is a Dirty Word, Too".
Now in 2025, I learned a whole bunch of other words that have transformed from being values to being offensive. Also, I learned an explanation of what's behind it.
New York Times columnist David Brooks puts forward the idea that "MAGA has profited by exploiting [left-wing revolutionary ideas] in order to destroy the left." ("Hey, Lefties! Trump Has Stolen Your Game.") Brooks says, "MAGA embraces left ideas to get its way (even while not knowing, in most cases, where these ideas came from)."
I'll mention only one, the one related to our subject in this blog post. That's so-called cancel culture. Brooks says, "There are more human beings in America eager to be offended than there are people eager to offend. A few years ago, people had their careers destroyed for uttering words that offended the snowflake left. Now people see their careers destroyed for uttering words that offend the snowflake right. These are words like diversity, equity, gender, nonbinary, antiracist, trauma and hate speech."
So, today I learned a whole bunch of words that MAGA conservatives consider to be offensive words. I also learned why MAGA conservatives are behaving this way. They are turning the left's taking offense at racism and sexism, etc, and turning it against the left by taking offense at values of the left. And it's working for them. The MAGA conservatives now own cancel culture, using it to take charge of institutions from government to media to schools.
Why do the MAGA conservatives want to do this? It's not just to take control of institutions. You'll have to read David Brooks's full column to better understand the ultimate goal. I'll just quote this from Brooks: "Back in 2013, Steve Bannon was honest about this. “I’m a Leninist,” he told an interviewer. “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, destroy all of today’s establishment.”
"Diversity said,
and suddenly thunder rolls
from a different sky."
—h/t ChatGPT
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