Destroys community
In his recent letter to Donald Bobbitt, president of the University of Arkansas System, Joseph Steinmetz, chancellor of UA-Fayetteville, recommended the relocation of the Fulbright statue. This recommendation should be ignored. It is a symptom of cancel culture, and cancel culture is a cancer that should be resisted.
But why exactly is cancel culture problematic? Racism is bad, most certainly, so why shouldn't we cancel those who are racist? One of the primary issues with cancel culture seems to be that it has no mercy. None whatsoever. It is pure justice, if you can call mob justice justice at all. But underneath this righteous (and quite justified) indignation is a fundamental misunderstanding about human nature.
I once heard an advocate of cancel culture say that we should cancel people because we need to remove toxic people to make way for non-toxic people. Spoiler alert! We are all toxic people. We are all sinners, and we sin quite regularly. And this fundamental misunderstanding--or, perhaps, arrogant pride--is why cancel culture is all justice and no mercy. The primary advocates don't see their own sins, their own toxicity. They think they are generally good people and that they shouldn't be canceled because they are non-toxic. They don't realize that if justice should be unleashed, justice should be unleashed on them just as much as it has been unleashed on the racists of the world. If anyone should be canceled, everyone should be canceled.
Steinmetz said in his letter, "We strive to promote an inherent feeling of belonging for everyone who joins the University of Arkansas community." Without mercy, there is no belonging. Anywhere. There is only a fear of being canceled. President Bobbitt, do not let cancel culture destroy the UofA community, as it almost certainly will.
STEPHEN IRBY
Fayetteville
Clear out the district
Mow-rhon or useless idiot; I must be one or the other. When I took the oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, it really meant something. Today, not so much. Members of both august bodies, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, are sounding more and more like members of some questionable groups around the globe that our State Department has put on various terrorist lists. Too much power and way too much partisanship.
Except for the "liberals" living in the Hillcrest, Heights, and Chenal, the good people of Arkansas usually vote to support conservative-valued political candidates for Congress. I hate to say it, but all 535 members of both the House and Senate who have served six or more years in Congress need to come home. I know you will be saying mow-rhon or just idiot now. Well, there are too many folks out there who have amassed so much power they are keeping other folks from really accomplishing anything. Too many folks have made generational legacies in Congress.
Let's be honest; Congress does not "function" at all. Stop kidding yourselves. Yes, we love our homegrown members of Congress; it is just to purge all of the careerists there. Sometimes we have to throw the baby out with all of the bathwater to get a clean tub of fresh water. Life will go on. The returning members will rejoin society and some of them will be greatly surprised to see just how awful things have become for the average working person. It will be a great renaissance to match the even greater one of the 14th century.
Oh, by the way, there are about 1 million staffers, bureaucrats, and other strap-hangers in Washington. They must be replaced right away too. Too many of them just swap out jobs to ensure their ever-continuing survival. Too bad. Bring them home too, even if most of them don't have a real place to call home. Get rid of every last single one too.
LOUIS BURNETT
Little Rock
Blame runs deeper
I believe the Capitol Hill mob was the logical culmination of years of mainstream Republican politics. For years, the GOP has vilified Democrats as extremists who represent an existential threat to America and whose election victories are inherently fraudulent. That "delegitimizing rhetoric" has long fueled the conservative movement, and the Capitol violence was the logical next step.
This was more than anger over a single election. It was an explosion of rage by whites who see their dominance threatened by the multiracial coalition of Americans who brought President Biden to power. Carrying Confederate flags, they were not fighting just to defend Trump, but also to defend white America, whose hold on power has become increasingly precarious.
WALTER KORZICK
Conway