I'm looking at the names. Some I'm not surprised at, like Wynton Marsalis. He probably just wants a free pass to shame and demonize Hip Hop culture. Salman Rushdie, still under yellow-alert Fatwa would have a better grasp at what 'illiberalism' is, but I can understand his sensitivity.

But Bari Weiss and her dramatic escape from the scary-woke *gulp* New York Times would have you believe the forced introspection of Cancel Culture is the new book-burning, and that intraoffice communications indicating she was kind of unpopular meant she was *this* close to being spirited away to some newly built Guantanamo of the Left. Think of the struggles people had to go through to break the 'illiberalism' of Jim Crow, you fucking baby. Nobody is going to arrest you for your safe, daddy-pleasing "But what will the Right think?" obsequiousness.

>And mayors ... aren't really great at that, it seems. By the
>nature of their job and the way our local/state/federal
>governments are nested, it really seems like most mayors feel
>a pretty strong obligation to bow down to capital. That move
>itself isn't itself fascism, but it does mean you're never
>going to close the shutters on fascism. They don't want secret
>police actually scooping people up off the street, but I think
>they'd also be pretty resistant to dismantling the legal
>mechanisms by which that happens in the first place. Gotta
>have the option.

Local politics beholden to capital ALWAYS has a poison pill for vulnerable working communities, communities usually of color. Whether it's a real aspirational drive for those politicians or merely a justification for policing or pricing an unwanted population out of existence, any obligation to capital is a huge obstacle to social justice.