After years of insisting that Vladimir Putin should not be listened to and that everything he says is meant to cause division, Democrats have finally found a proclamation from him they can get behind. All it took was for the Russian leader to play into a favored liberal narrative and suddenly, his word is solid gold.
You see, Putin talked about cancel culture, and that must mean that cancel culture isn’t real and is just made up by the right-wing in America. Remember, you are never to take Putin at face value regarding anything he says. Well, unless he says something that allows Democrats to proclaim victory on a domestic political issue.
Now, to be sure, Putin’s citation of cancel culture is ludicrous. No one is trying to “cancel” the Russian leader by any accepted definition of the term. Rather, cancel culture typically denotes the targeting of someone’s employment based on something they previously said or did completely unrelated to their current situation. That often manifests by digging up old, less-than-politically correct tweets or by taking someone’s statements from a decade ago out of context. Putin is invading a foreign country under false pretenses. We can safely conclude he doesn’t qualify because he’s being targeted based on what he’s currently doing, not some long past, manufactured transgression.
Given that, if Putin’s modus operandi is to make political statements in order to divide his enemies, doesn’t it seem obvious that his mention of cancel culture was designed to goad Democrats into claiming Republicans are somehow in league with the Russian leader? And sure enough, the Democrats were more than willing to take the bait.
Regardless, even if Putin is being sincere (he’s not), who cares? Do you know who liked dogs? Adolf Hitler liked dogs. Does that make dogs bad? Putin bringing up cancel culture does not at all qualify as evidence that it doesn’t exist. To suggest such is idiotic. Besides, we have more than enough real-world examples at this point that cancel culture is a tactic, primarily used by the left, that has delivered real negative consequences for real people. That doesn’t change just because Putin said something about J.K. Rowling and the transgender controversy she’s battled.
In the end, ask yourself who the real Putin puppets are, a common claim from the left towards those on the right. Is it those who believe what they believe regardless of what the Russian leader says? Or those who jump to accept his word as gospel the moment it reinforces one of their political narratives? I think we all know the answer to that question.