You are not addressing the point that the society at large has to continue to trust institutions to alleviate concerns of corruption by the institution. The mob is not formed in a vacuum. Democracy, rule of law, and government only have value when trust in those pillars of our society have not been eroded to the point where large swaths of people form a mob to carry out their own justice. It’s been made abundantly clear in the West that our systems are very vulnerable to bad faith actors from inside the system.
> Americans have fought and died to uphold these values, and now a pocket of their own citizenry wants to demolish them.
This is true for both ends of this spectrum and also never ending. The mob doesn’t see themselves as eroding those institutions just as our current government doesn’t see itself as obstructionists. What makes this difficult is two competing extremes. I don’t focus on cancel culture because I’m concerned more with the erosion of our voting rights and the dismantling of our institutions by our own citizens. It doesn’t invalidate your points what so ever but it makes them a blind spot for individuals with competing priorities.
"I don’t focus on cancel culture because I’m concerned more with the erosion of our voting rights and the dismantling of our institutions by our own citizens."
Maybe we need to focus on both as manifestations of the same disease, even though one is much worse than the other?
Of course, but I don’t have the personal bandwidth to mentally deal with every issue we need to resolve as a society. I get around this by not out of hand dismissing concerns by others but I also can’t take an active stance in their solutions. This is likely a more common story than we want to admit and the numerous issues across our political spectrum fragment our chances at a unified response to the problem.
> Americans have fought and died to uphold these values, and now a pocket of their own citizenry wants to demolish them.
This is true for both ends of this spectrum and also never ending. The mob doesn’t see themselves as eroding those institutions just as our current government doesn’t see itself as obstructionists. What makes this difficult is two competing extremes. I don’t focus on cancel culture because I’m concerned more with the erosion of our voting rights and the dismantling of our institutions by our own citizens. It doesn’t invalidate your points what so ever but it makes them a blind spot for individuals with competing priorities.