It’s time to cancel-proof our lives

You are just one social media post away from losing your job or your business.

The cancel culture is rampant in early 2021. It is an all-consuming fire seeking to burn down everything and everyone in its path.

No longer content to demonstrate in public, protestors are showing up at private homes to harass residents and neighbors, scare children and break things all in the name of “social justice.”

It doesn’t matter if your company has been providing outstanding products or services for half a century, if “they” don’t feel the firm is “woke” enough, an invisible force will go to work to crush it.

Who is “they?” It’s a mob mentality that, once unleashed against a person or company, is not satisfied until it has extracted blood or some kind of concession to the ever-changing conventional wisdom of woke society that is neither wise, nor conventional.

How can you be cancelled?

It’s easy to be cancelled. Just share an opinion. Here are some cancellable thought-crimes for which people have been punished, but the list of possible offenses is growing daily:

• Believing in just two genders, not the 63 currently known to exist.
• Believing that marriage should involve just one man and one woman. Even if you believe in legally-protected civil unions, simply suggesting that the Judeo-Christian word “marriage” should not apply to just any two or more entities is enough to rouse the woke monster.
• Believing there were election irregularities in 2020 due to COVID-fueled government responses that may have worked to cast doubt on the integrity of results.
• Believing that a vaccine developed in four months hasn’t really been fully vetted considering it is impossible to evaluate the drug’s impact on a fetus because no woman has become pregnant and delivered a child since the vaccine was first developed.

Hardly a day goes by without news of someone being fired or punished for committing the crime of offending another person. It does not matter one bit that no formal laws have been broken in order for a punishment to be imposed.

In fact, businesses facing the cancel culture will often select an employee to be thrown into the volcano as a sacrifice in hopes of calming the angry mob.

There is no due process. You don’t get your day in court to present your side of the story or even to present evidence that what you said was, in fact, true or sensible.

You will be charged, tried by the kangaroo court of public opinion, and quickly ushered to the gallows.

The 10 Commandments have been replaced with just one command: Thou shalt not offend anyone, anywhere, at any time for any reason, with or without cause.

One offended person is all it takes for you to have committed a thought-crime.. There was a news story this week about a professor being fired from Pacific University after he offended a single person with a story he has used to illustrate a point in many earlier classes.

He simply recalled a story of his own college days when he and some chums were walking toward a bar admiring the ladies standing outside. As the guys got closer, they saw a sign welcoming female impersonators to a contest at the tavern. He described how their perceptions changed in an instant.

However, one person thought the story was “making jokes” about transgender people. The professor was quickly devoured by the woke monster.

When you’re caught in the beasts’ jaws, an apology is not just demanded, it is expected. But, it’s still not enough. A price must be extracted before the mob can turn its attention to the next hapless victim who winds up saying or writing the wrong thing at the wrong time.

It certainly doesn’t help that there are two entirely different sets of speech standards for people based on their race and sexual or political preferences. If you fall into any one of these categories, it’s not a matter of if you will be cancelled, it’s only a matter of when:

Since I fit each of those descriptions, I know my days are numbered. That’s why I have already taken steps to protect myself and my future. I am cancel-proofing my life.

What is cancel-proofed?

To ensure you can’t be canceled and have your life upended simply because you offended someone else with a thought or word, you need to be proactive today to protect yourself, your assets and your family.

Over the next several weeks, I will be researching options and offering advice on what you can do today to ready yourself for the moment when you’re cancelled.

It will require some changes on your part. You may have to rely on fewer conveniences than you have enjoyed in the past, or it may require a few extra steps on your part to accomplish the same things you have been accustomed to doing.

You will need to be prepared, and that requires taking action today. Then, when you’re cancelled, you can just smile because life will go on without so much as a speed bump on the path to accomplishing your goals.

You can’t wait to act until after you’re cancelled or there will be a lot more pain in your life, especially once you’re under the spotlight. Until the woke monster moves on, and zeros in on its next victim, your life will be a living hell.

That’s assuming the monster really does move on. It’s still rare that someone who is fired from one job finds the woke monster following him or her to the next. It happens, but usually only to high-profile targets.

Yet, I am sure it is only a matter of time before a database of cancelled people is maintained and frequently referenced to ensure your life cannot continue as normal until you fully, completely and undeniably capitulate to the demands of the mob.

I sense a time coming when people who are cancelled in one area, will be persistently pursued by the mob until the person is cancelled everywhere. That’s truer for business owners than it is for other people. Yet, we are beginning to see the cascading impact the cancel culture has on business owners where they can lose their:

Pushing someone out of business to teach a lesson can mean innocent people, like employees, are punished, too. But, even then, the woke monster would say there are no innocent people, just enablers serving the intolerant.

So, the bottom line is that the only way to truly protect yourself from being cancelled is to completely back away from social media, don’t engage in any conversations with others or ensure you’re not caught reading the “wrong” material.

Since that’s pretty impractical, the next best thing to do is make yourself cancel-proof by diminishing the impact it will have on your life when the mob descends on you. Stay tuned for practical ideas in the weeks ahead.

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Originally published at https://www.greggerber.com on February 27, 2021.