We supposedly inhabit “cancel culture.” If that’s so, why is it so hard to cancel someone who so obviously deserves it? How powerful a variable can “cancel culture” be if it’s consistent with someone spending decades tweeting out the most anti-woke, bigoted bilge he can dream up, being tolerated by his colleagues in local government for years, being appointed to positions in local government during the same time, and with his carrying on with his political career as if nothing happened? How is cancel culture consistent with nothing happening? What happened to the cancel part?

And I’m curious: what do all of those moral saints like Kevin Vallier think should be done in cases like Justin Goldsman’s? Vallier was the one who argued, years back, that cancel culture was an unhealthy thing, that it encouraged attitudes of moral hubris where we should all be cultivating humility, self-criticism, and skepticism. Really? A guy spends decades vomiting his filth out on social media, then runs for public office in an election with a full slate of committed, competent candidates. Is no one to know anything about his past track record? Are we not to judge it? Do claims of desert not apply? Are we somehow bound forever to agnosticism and self-induced paralysis so that people like this become the norm all around us? Isn’t that kind of what’s happened over the last decade? If I’m the bad guy here, what the fuck am I missing?

St Cloud School, West Orange.

I would really love for all of these saints and hand-wringers to tell me what they regard as the “right” way to react: I spent a childhood in West Orange being called a “nigger.” It’s a word I’ve dislocated limbs over, mine and others’. Not long ago, I was told that the word itself is a taboo when I describe how it was used against me for decades. But nothing is asked, much less demanded, of fun-loving, donut-wielding Justin, who uses it in a spirit of good jocular fun with an “n-pass” from his friends. Not only is nothing asked or demanded of him, but West Orange Council sits there, year after year, pretending that a person with a track record like this is a worthy co-participant in its civic life. In what universe does an aspiring politician and sitting member of an HRC use the n-word without ever publicly having to repudiate it?

In West Orange, obviously. West Orange is my secondary, not my primary residence. I wonder if people in West Orange have any idea of the reputation they enjoy outside of the municipal boundaries of their township. The perspective of an inside-outsider is probably one they could use.

A friend of mine who read my earlier post said that while I had a legitimate point, it read “too much like a declaration of war.” That’s a feature, not a bug. A declaration of war is what West Orange Council deserves. The same people who can’t shut up about the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, who mouth platitudes and pieties about avoiding “hate” when it comes to anti-Semitism–which they define by the methods of insinuation and free association–suddenly cozy up to a practitioner of every other kind of shit. The same people who affect such seriousness when it comes to anti-Semitism–who (justifiably) wouldn’t give the time of day to someone who tweeted the anti-Semitic equivalents of Goldsman’s posts–put on a smiling, welcoming act for Justin.

Why is that? Is Justin, at the end of the day, one of them? Are they all instances of him? In that case, why wouldn’t a war be exactly what they deserved? All I can say is, no one who gives Justin Goldsman a warm welcome can expect warmth from me. They have to expect cold hostility. It’s something I can promise them. It’s something they richly deserve.