I guess if I think about it, the problem with cancel culture for me isn't even the canceling - it's just the way dialogue tends to play out around it. And of course that type of dialogue isn't actually unique to cancel culture, although it's just been a bit hard for me to separate the two conceptually.

So you are probably right in that regard, in that the anticipated ends (i.e. social justice objectives) generally outweigh the costs (e.g people forced out of jobs). Or at least that's not really the part of cancel culture that concerns me. So I guess I don't even have an issue with cancel culture per se.

Thanks for helping me see that.

But when I say I want better dialogue, I don't think you really understand what I mean. I'm not advocating just for being more "nice" or "polite" to each other. I'm not particularly concerned about that. What I am advocating for is for people to adopt a few specific principles in their communication, probably the most important of which are:

1. Don't project your assumptions onto people.

2. Don't try to conflate or coerce someone's words to mean something they didn't mean.

3. Be willing to reinterpret you understanding of what they've said as the conversation goes on.

These rules are more important than rules of politeness, because they are rules of understanding. If you make incorrect assumptions about someone, and don't let them clarify, then you literally don't understand them, and everything you believe about them is literally wrong.

Do you see why that is?

For example, your assertion that I was trying to "lump" MLK's killers in with present day activists is not correct. Of course I recognize the difference between killing someone and merely putting pressure on them, and didn't realize I needed to spell that out explicitly so as not to draw your accusations. I am not at all trying to conflate the two. Honestly, it didn't occur to me that anyone would even think of it that way.

But the fact that you made that assumption about me is wrong. It means you had a wrong understanding of who I am, what I believe, and what I am trying to say.

Now the question is, are you willing to rethink what I'm saying? Or have you already put me in a box of people who are just out here to fight progress and "preserve the status quo"?

Because from my perspective, you are the one preserving the status quo (of making bad assumptions about the people you disagree with), and I'm the one fighting tooth and nail to help us have better conversations. And I think if we can establish a culture of having better conversations, that will actually get at the root of our problems, and have a much bigger - and permanent - positive effect on social justice and everything else.