There's an old and now-dated joke that is the genesis of that headline. The setup to the joke is the question: "What are the three greatest lies in America?" The punchline is: "(1.) The check is in the mail, (2.) I will respect you in the morning, and (3.) I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."

I am reminded of this now because of a confluence of disparate issues, from Democrats bolstering the rights of transgendered people to the reaction to the news that the publisher of the Dr. Seuss canon will not be publishing six of his books anymore because of racially insensitive depictions. And a lot of other unrelated things, as well, such as Donald Trump railing about seemingly mundane issues like toilets and lightbulbs and dishwashers. Many of these things are now being lumped together politically as a conservative crusade against "cancel culture."

Progressives and other lefties generally sneer at the entire political fracas. They shouldn't, because it's getting more and more potent as an issue and it is going to be exploited for all it is worth by Republicans for the foreseeable future. Because rather than sticking to some sort of strict and agreed-upon definition of what "cancel culture" is, conservatives have successfully tied so many things to the label that it has lost all specific meaning -- in the same fashion that Donald Trump vaguely defined "fake news" to his liking.

An intelligent and logical response isn't going to work, to put this another way. "Being against the so-called 'cancel culture' is nothing more than demanding that nobody ever pays any consequences at all for anything bad they have ever said or done," is usually the first attempt at reasoning the problem away. It has the benefit of being true, as well. But it's not convincing.

"Republicans are the biggest cancellers around. They tried to cancel gay people, they tried to cancel millions of votes in the last election, and now they're trying to cancel members of their own party for voting to uphold the Constitution," is another good argument that will gain no traction. Even specifically: "Donald Trump has tried to cancel more people in four years than every liberal combined," also isn't going to work.

Arguing specific cases won't work either. Dr. Seuss isn't being outlawed, or banned, or censored, or having his books burned in the streets. None of that is true. Not even close. And yet, that is exactly how the right is framing it. Even though the rightful owner of the copyright decided on their own to stop publishing the works, conservatives will lay the blame on liberal cancel culture. And they already have. Fox News has been going absolutely moosepoop-crazy over it for the past few days, almost to the exclusion of all else. Kevin McCarthy, the highest ranking Republican in the House, said during an unrelated debate on a bill to strengthen voting rights: "First, they outlaw Dr. Seuss and now they want to tell us what to say." Please note that there is no "they" to be scared of other than the owner of the copyright (which is ironic because conservatives used to be staunchly for the rights of property owners to do as they wished, back when they actually had an ideology). Also, note that nobody has outlawed Dr. Seuss, or even suggested such an outrageous thing. And yet, that's how Republicans are already talking about it. Just wait until they get around to putting it into a campaign ad! It'll be Big Brother and Nazi Germany and the Spanish Inquisition all rolled into one, by that point. Think I'm exaggerating? Well... maybe a little, but not by much.

Most liberals never really grasped what the whole draw of Trump was (and is). It's astonishing the level of support he gets from people for whom he, essentially, didn't do much of anything tangible at all. There simply was no "populist conservatism" of Trump, it was all sheer demagoguery. But it fed into and magnified a phenomenon which already existed, and allowed certain things to be said out loud.

But at its core, it was a revolt against being told what to do. Since Trump was a real estate developer, he had what others considered a bizarre fixation on household appliances. Things like low-flow toilets and showerheads, non-incandescent lightbulbs, and modern dishwashers just sent Trump into a frenzy. Much to most liberals' delight, since they failed to grasp why the audience cheered so loud. Trump, in revamping a building, would doubtlessly have to buy hundreds of toilets and showerheads and other fixtures. And then he'd have to listen to complaints from tenants about how disappointing the new appliances were, when compared to what everyone had been used to their entire lives. It was magnified in Trump because he bought so many of them -- but it wasn't just Trump who felt this way. That's the point liberals miss, at their peril.

Liberals, when put in power, do have a tendency to overreach. Not so much on what they're trying to accomplish, but instead by mandating change rather than allowing the new to compete with the old, over a period of time. That's not quick enough, liberals say; we simply must force this change on society as fast as possible. That is the key mistake, because then instead of having to convince everyone your idea is better, you can just force it upon them (which is a lot easier). This could be called "technocracy," but the more-honest term would be "elitism." "We, the elite, make the decisions -- and you, the hoi polloi, must do as we say because we know better than you what the correct answer to the problem is. In fact, we know what hoi polloi means, and you probably don't." That is indeed the condescending tone many hear.

And that is precisely what Trump voters feel, on a whole host of issues. And have felt, for a long time. And they resent the heck out of it. Trump didn't create it, he just masterfully used it to his benefit politically. And even without Trump at the helm, that is what is really driving what is now being called "Trumpism."

For a long time, I simplistically thought Trump supporters only really cared about one thing: making liberals cry. If something provoked a strong reaction of outrage from liberals, then (by definition, almost) it just had to be the right thing to do. The more upset the liberals got, the better. But I now think that the seething resentment against elites telling them what they can and cannot do and say really is the key motivating factor -- the liberal tears are just a nice side benefit, the icing on the cake as it were.

This ties together a lot. It's why Trump was so successful convincing his followers that wearing a mask in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic was some sort of wimpy political correctness, and should be sneered at and violently resisted. Because it fed into the same: "Don't tell me what to do" thinking. "No pointy-headed expert's gonna tell me what to put on my face!" The real tragedy is that when this was actually crucially needed -- people believing and following expert advice -- it had already been undermined to the extent that it was. And once Trump refused to wear a mask, that battle was largely lost.

Not only being told what is the new standard, but forced into it has been going on for a while, which is why all those seemingly-laughable household fixture examples were more powerful than liberals knew. Because anyone who has had to replace a toilet or a showerhead in the past few decades has run into the problem of technocrats dictating what is now allowable and what isn't. And when "the way they've always been" falls on the newly-banned side of that line, it breeds resentment. Especially since the mandates for use almost always predate the perfection of the new technology. The first low-flow toilets really were (almost) as bad as Trump said. They've improved enormously since then, but being forced to buy something -- for a lot more money, usually -- that demonstrably works worse than the old standard bred a lot of resentment in many ways. And it's not just toilets, it's a lot of stuff that reaches directly into everyone's lives. Who doesn't use lightbulbs, after all (except the Amish)?

For some reason, liberals are reluctant to truly let the market decide. Take health insurance. Single-payer is the liberal dream. But for some of them it's not enough to slowly evolve towards that goal by allowing everyone to (for instance, this is just one public option scheme) voluntarily buy into Medicare, in direct competition with the private insurance marketplace. If liberals truly did have the courage of their convictions, they would gladly allow this migration to happen organically, as everyone slowly realized how superior Medicare was to all private insurance. More and more people would eventually flock to it, and private insurance would wither on the vine and eventually just disappear since we would have effectively reached "single-payer for all" anyway. But that's not enough for some -- for some, the only way to achieve it is to force it upon everyone without giving them any say in the matter whatsoever.

This, again, is the arrogance of the left. And it's what breeds all the resentment from the right. Being told what you can and cannot do is just flat-out annoying. And liberals really should try to understand this, because it really is a core human emotion.

At times, such absolutism is actually necessary, such as when the question involves basic human rights. For example, for a long time, some (overly politically cautious) liberals took an intermediate route that created second-class citizens. "Marriage" would be reserved for heterosexuals, and gay people would just have to be content with "civil unions." That was wrong, and eventually it got fixed. Currently, transgender rights fall into the same category. The battle for gay marriage is over -- Republicans won't even bring it up as a wedge issue any more, because they know they lost in the battle for public opinion. Currently, President Joe Biden is advancing the cause of transgender rights by leaps and bounds, and even though it's going to breed resentment from many, it is still the right and necessary thing to do.

But for the other stuff, sometimes allowing people to have a choice is the best way to go, to transition to a better way of doing things. The best current example might be energy production. Nobody's banned fossil fuel power plants (yet), but windmills and solar are given tax breaks to get them off the ground. Slowly, over time, more and more of the country's energy is produced from renewable sources. The most astonishing thing to me about the recent Texas electrical grid failure was learning how much of it was produced from renewable sources. I mean, ten to twenty percent of the power in Texas is renewable? That's really astonishing, when you think about it. But so far, mandating quotas is about as far as anyone has gone, so we are now in an intermediate period where power is generated all kinds of ways, and the obvious economic and social losers will continue fading away. Eventually, they will cease to exist. But not all at once.

It's a little tougher when you get back to how conservatives initially defined "cancel culture," but even this can be given a very conservative spin. "The answer to a private company deciding who it allows on its social media website and who it doesn't isn't some sort of big-government intervention -- instead, it is to create a competing site like Parler and compete for everyone's business in the free marketplace." Again, private companies being able to do what they want used to be a bedrock conservative tenet. "Who are we to say what some publisher decides to publish and what he doesn't? If you think these Dr. Seuss books are worthy of continued publication, then raise millions of dollars and offer it to the holder of the copyright so you can publish it on your own -- that is the free market way, free of any government coercion whatsoever. What true conservative could be for the government in any way dictating to a private company what book they must publish, after all?"

Put this way, Republicans bemoaning "cancel culture" is exposed as the silliness it truly is. None of this -- zero -- has the slightest thing to do with the First Amendment, and liberals should point this out repeatedly. The First Amendment says, and I quote: "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech." That first part is important -- Congress shall make no law. Of all the "cancel culture" Republicans love to decry, can anyone please show me one single example of any of it that was caused by any law Congress either passed or failed to pass? Any of it?

I confidently ask that because I know the answer. The First Amendment says zero about what corporations or private entities can or cannot do. Except in one instance (the only private businesses mentioned in the entire Constitution), where the First Amendment also guarantees the freedom of "the press." Which includes publishing (or not publishing) books. Free of any government interference, period. Banning someone from speaking in your concert hall or on your online platform or not publishing their book has nothing to do with the First Amendment because censorship only exists when the government does it. Otherwise we would all be entitled to host our own primetime network television show, because any broadcaster that refused us would be "censoring" us. Which is just laughable. Twitter or Facebook doing the same thing is also not "censorship," and to claim it is equally laughable.

Attack the anti-cancellers using conservative logic and the Constitution itself. Again, both of these used to be bedrock beliefs on the right, and it's a fair bet that there are indeed many Republican voters out there who do remember such things. "Don't like Dr. Seuss books being pulled? Then buy the rights and publish them yourself -- it's a free country!" or: "The way to fight Twitter banning people isn't with new government laws, it's by everyone who is outraged at such bans leaving Twitter and moving to a site that agrees with their outrage." Or even: "Angry that racially-insensitive corporate logos like Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima are being retired? Well, you are free to create your own racist product line and compete for people's business -- there is absolutely nothing stopping you from doing so. Except the consumers themselves, of course. Good luck!"

Private companies are just not telling people what they can and cannot do. They can't -- they really don't have that power. Only governments can really do so. Private companies defending their own property rights is just not the same as government taking rights away from all. Framed that way, it is not a matter of Big Brother "telling me what I can and cannot do and say," it is instead a matter of elitist corporate leaders doing so. Which is not really something government can -- or should -- try to "fix" in any way.

As I said, this resentment has been around a long time, and I think it really began by government dictating things to consumers -- what showerhead you could use, for instance. That's an awfully personal thing for Big Brother to force upon you.

I say all this in the hopes that liberals do begin to understand both the underlying resentment at government actions that affect everyone in very personal and concrete ways, and also how to effectively redirect any "cancel culture" rage onto big corporations, and not progressives in Congress. Because I think both will be very valuable lessons, should the Senate ever actually get rid of the legislative filibuster and allow most of the current liberal agenda to be enacted. Allow people transition time to get used to new ways of doing things, and redouble efforts to educate people and convince them of the superiority of your new idea. Build this into the new laws a filibuster-free Senate will be able to pass. Don't force big changes upon the public all at once -- allow for a gradual transition period. Because forcing such major change by fiat too quickly is just going to breed more resentment. And after Donald Trump showed the Republicans how to fully exploit this resentment, you can bet your bottom dollar they'll feed the same anger again, to great effect.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant