Back in 2004, Condoleezza Rice was invited to speak at Rutgers University’s commencement. This was met with a vicious protest by both students and faculty. As a result, she backed out of speaking.

While unfortunately, this giving in to the heckler’s veto was not the only one of it’s kind, this event specifically, came to my mind this week as I watched Gina Carano, interviewed by Ben Shapiro. It is her first interview since Disney Plus terminated here from her role in The Mandalorian. As should be obvious by now, the months-long campaign to achieve this, had been clearly successful.

In the course of the conversation, something she says jumps out at me.

… My body’s still shaking. It’s still devastating. But the thought of this happening to anybody else, especially like somebody who could not handle this the way I can, no. They don’t get to do that. They don’t get to make people feel like that. And if I buckle, then little girls and little boys, who are not getting a good fair shake at growing up right now, if I buckle, it’s gonna make it okay for these companies who have had a history of lying, to be lying to do this to other people. And they’ve done it to other people.

One of the prevailing warnings that were unheeded during the Condi Rice fiasco, was that the protest of these college students and faculty was ultimately infantalising. That their inability to tolerate a different worldview, must not be capitulated to. Doing so, left them unprepared for rest of their journey into the real world.

They may work for a boss, live with a neighbor, or even marry into a family filled with such people. They could not survive a world in which these basic encounters triggered them into the tyrannical instinct to “eliminate” these people, in order to dominate whatever space they happen to occupy.

The catch of course, is that they can only learn this lesson when the adults around them resist the instinct to kowtow to every tantrum these “kids” throw at them. In other words, children only truly grow when the adults around them keep them tethered to the bounds of reality.

That is not the case anymore. The fallback response, that these kids are unprepared for the real world is actually waning. Those kids now run the corporations, and most of them have successfully bullied the older counterparts to join their “righteous” cause. From the newsroom to Silicon Valley, they’re the ones now running things. So much power. Ceded to those now groomed to feel pure by stamping out any view contrary to their own.

Condi Rice’s reasoning (that she didn’t want to be a distraction from the main event) may have come from honest and humble intentions. But whatever reasons that led her to that decision, it was a great mistake. This is true in her case, and in all the other cases in which this has happened over the years. With each capitulation, the offenders in this cancel culture, became more emboldened.

Carano’s point might as well have been a perfect response to Rice’s rationale. A university student body having a nice graduation no matter what, is actually not that important. Developing as both a mentally and an intellectually adept human being (the point of a university if you can still believe it) was. Getting distracted for some minutes because a public figure you didn’t like gave a speech as is their right to do in a free country isn’t a distraction worth capitulating to. The lessons a graduate could have learned from that, would have been valuable far beyond the halls of the campus.

For those who like Rice, needed to smooth out the kinks in the moment, Carano’s ability to see beyond the present, into it’s future implications should stand as for two reasons.

It should stand as a reminder for those who failed before, on what is lost in these ceded grounds. As we can see, whatever ground you had to stamp this out, has eroded from beneath you, because these chances don’t last forever.

Secondly, it should stand as a masterclass in how to embrace the discomfort of the moment, in order to achieve something that transcends that moment.

Carano isn’t some hulking figure dispassionately warding off the attacks on her. She spends a lot of that interview with shaky voice, quivering lips, fighting back tears. All you see of her resolve, comes from the profound vision of what she says. A vision that propelled her to create the necessary discomfort of the moment, because of something greater. The idea that the necessary shot every child has of growing, and growing well, is being hindered by the cowardice of those who came before.

This trend of identifying “undesirables” in society who need to be crucified for some idea of “public goodness,” is robbing kids of the ability to truly grow up. It goes beyond whatever film, or company, or school that that some unfortunate soul happens to be fired, banned, or expelled from.

As pervasive, and as odious as cancel culture has become today, the situation is even worse. This kind of thinking does not automatically go away. It does not “grow out of” it’s tendencies. The worldview that sees the self as a righteously superior being, will ultimately seek to impose that righteousness on others. The inevitable outcome is tyranny.

You can only “make” people “better” by force. Only fools delude themselves with the notion that they can avoid that destination while walking that path.

It’s refreshing that every once in a while a character as unusual as a female MMA fighter turned actress can recognize that. That the greatest thing (outside of love itself of course,) those who came before can give those who just arrived, is a good and fair shot at growing up. But the ones who have spent their time in the intellectual sphere, better pick up the pace on that. And fast.