This story out of Walled Lake Western high school is literally unbelievable. A popular AP history teacher and baseball coach has allegedly been terminated for an offensive post on Twitter. Here is the offending post.
I though this had to be a joke. Surely nobody gets fired for stating an incontrovertible fact and expressing tepid support for the sitting US President, right? How could such an innocuous statement be grounds for firing? Well, the response to this Tweet in the comments was nothing short of astounding. Mr. Kucera was accused of: intentionally instilling fear in black and immigrant students; supporting racism, sexism, and homophobia; enabling sexual predators; and failing to see the similarities between the United States and 1930’s Germany, among many other lurid things. The hatred directed at any person willing to publicly support Donald Trump was palpable. I was going to highlight some of the more unhinged examples, but I’m not sure which are high school students and which are adults.
Cancel culture has to be the absolute worst development of the social media age. Online mobs have found they can ruin the lives of random strangers for the most trivial slights. And they can do it without even having to get off the couch. Some do it to intimidate their political rivals into silence. Some do it to virtue signal. And some seem to do it just for kicks. A group of liberals, most likely sensing the beast they helped create was out of control and ready to turn on them, recently signed an open letter denouncing cancel culture. Alas, that Genie is already out of the bottle. I hope this insanity comes to an end, but I see no reason to be optimistic it will stop any time soon.
Post Script
Somebody in the comments posted a screen shot of a second tweet that was allegedly deleted. It’s at least mildly offensive, I guess. But if this is the bar we are setting for firing offenses, there aren’t going to be very many teachers left. (Note: it looks pretty legit, but screen shots are ridiculously easy to fake.)
