I admire Ms. Daum's commitment to nuance, but I think she slips in her likening cancel culture to broken-windows policing. The problem with cancel culture, and perhaps with Giuliani's version of broken windows policing, is that the punishments do not fit the crime.

Also, broken-windows is the contract tracing of pandemic remedies. It is the stitch in time, the ounce of prevention. Giuliani was more than a day late and more than a cop short.

Cancel culture is Red Queen stuff: Off with his head! And it seems to me something of an addiction, a way to join a mob that feels so good to be part of.

It's all so small-town, like we're all living through Shirley Jackson's "Lottery," never knowing whom the stones will strike down next.

Maybe the "words aren't enough" meme has run amok. If your outrage doesn't take a scalp, maybe it isn't real. Maybe it's just "virtue signaling" "pearl-clutching," or God forbid, "performative." Blood on the sword, that's the ticket!