You know, I get where people are coming from. An example for me might be people who complain about lack of women and diversity in the videogame industry, rather than just making good videogames. Good artists persevere and make it work imo. Kotaku is brutal about that stuff. Maybe I'm being stodgy but that stuff kills me.
Another example is the lady who had a sign of deceased immigrants at a July 4th parade. She was
immediately crucified for appearing to make light of the death of immigrants on the border. People threatened her with violence and doxxing. But she meant it in the completely opposite way, as a protest against the US' harsh border policies. It
turned out that she had driven thousands of miles to deliver truckloads of food, and done multiple kickstarters to help people suffering at the border. I don't like boomer terminology like "woke" or "cancel culture," but that sort of kneejerk mob response is harmful and wrong.
But that's a separate thing from what Obama is saying imo. I did watch it again, I've seen it before and I've watched it a few more times in this sitting. He complains about "purity" and being "never compromised," says the "world is messy, there are ambiguities." "There is this sense sometimes that the way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people and that's enough." I've heard this "purity test" stuff before, almost always from people who fail them. In this particular context, I think he's referring more to himself and criticism of politicians for 'not being perfect,' more than a broader 'cancel culture' itself.
The guy killed kids with flying robots, illegally, with zero due process. He sold weapons to Saudi Arabia that were used to incinerate school buses. He overthrew a sovereign govt in Libya, which collapsed into a failed state, with open air slave markets where you can buy a man for $400. He enforced sanctions on Iran that literally killed thousands of people. That's not messy, it's not a flaw, it's not ambiguities. They were deliberate choices with direct consequences.
I don't think it's being "judgmental" to be morally repulsed by that. It's not "woke," but the stark realization that even the nice-talking men in clean suits with pretty rhetoric can lay waste to humanity on a scale unimaginable to most Americans. I don't think people need to apologize for having strong feelings about that. And I think those views deserve a lot more respect than to be trivialized by this sort of cynical fingerwagging.
