The Cancel Culture Panic and Middle-Aged Sadness

From The Cancel Culture Panic and Middle-Aged Sadness:

Many people I know over 40 — maybe 35 — resent new social mores that demand outsized sensitivity to causing harm. It has been jarring to go from an intellectual culture that prizes transgression to one that polices it. The shame of turning into the sort of old person repelled by the sensibilities of the young is a cause of real psychic pain….For the individual, this may be a source of anguish [but] that doesn’t make it a political emergency.


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