Sounds like a great thing, huh? Telling powerful people the truth, whether or not they want to hear it. Only thing is, most of the people who lay claim to this are telling people who agree with them what they want to hear and only telling people who don’t have power over them what they don’t want to hear.

Assuming that both haven’t heard it all before.

It’s easy to make this claim, especially on social media. After all, the person has published what they said for all the world to see. Of course, they are also aware that it is unlikely that someone with power to use against them will either see it or care enough about some blowhard on the Internet to actually do anything about it.

Basically, most of these ‘warriors’ aren’t facing any real risk. They get to put spiffy adages in their profiles and look cool to anyone naïve enough to believe that in a free country telling off the Internet constitutes much, if any, of a risk.

Now, I know what you’re thinking – what about cancel culture? Cancel culture is almost exclusively leftist. The guys boldly proclaiming that they ‘speak truth to power’ are also almost exclusively leftist. As long as their ‘truth’ aligns with whatever is popular in the crazier circles there is little risk of being cancelled.

The cancel culture knives only come out when one of these boffo warriors starts to grow up and is dumb enough to say publicly that maybe the other side has one tiny little point. Cults don’t like it when you try to leave or worse, try to reason with their cultists.

And that’s really what cancel culture is – a cult. Impressively, it’s even less intellectually coherent than the Moonies or the Hare Krishnas.

It’s a sad reality that we have done a crappy job educating kids in K – 12. We just stuff their heads with mostly useless facts so they can take tests and make it look like the schools did something. But the ‘bringing out’ that education is supposed to be, that we fail utterly. The result is poorly adapted kids both academically and socially who are easy prey for some long haired hippie leftover to indoctrinate in the Cult of Woke.

In the meantime these self aggrandized ‘social Justice warriors’ spout nonsense that at best does nothing and worse hurts the people they arrogantly claim to speak for. This is one of those things that annoys because it is so incredibly stupid. I grew up in Alabama. Twenty-five or more percent of our population is black. I’ve yet to meet these poor oppressed black people too scared to speak for themselves. I also have yet to see any of these boffo warriors dumb enough to come down here and tell black folks to their faces that they are too poor, oppressed and scared to speak for themselves.

You can be sure that hasn’t happened – the boffo warriors would have had their collective heads handed to them. It would have been all over the news. And funny as all get out.

But you won’t see that ever happen. It’s much safer speaking truth to powers that like what they hear or yelling at people who won’t smack you. That’s why all their riots are in places that don’t actually have racial issues. In those places, you end up arguing with people who know what they are talking about or who know you’re full of it. Worse, most of the people you end up arguing with are the very people you are dumb enough to believe can’t speak up for themselves.

Real, normal people perfectly capable of speaking up for themselves when they decide they need to, or of suing the boss when he violates their rights. An amazing number of the supposedly oppressed are perfectly competent people. And when the boffo warriors try ‘speaking truth to power’ to those folks, they end up with an earful and a heck of a real education.

Speaking truth to power isn’t something you brag about. It’s telling the boss that he’s wrong and facing the consequences. It’s telling cancel culture they are wrong and fighting to get your Twitter account back. It’s speaking up for what you believe when YOU WILL GET HURT – but you do it anyway because you are convinced you are right.

None of these culture warrior braggarts do that. They are the boffo warriors, proudly announcing their many victories against the weak while defending those who don’t need or want their help. They have ‘speak truth to power’ bumper stickers on their parent’s Teslas and made up versions of pronouns on their profiles.

At least tie dye was colorful. It’s sad when hippies have a better fashion sense than you do.

But, just like their predecessors, they will eventually grow up. Unlike for the kids of the Sixties, it’s not likely that there will be universities to hide out in for the next five decades, so this go round, many more proportionately will end up facing the music of real life sooner rather than later. With Biden in office, much sooner.

They will grow out of it because reality will happen to them. Be kind – we were just as dumb. Just better dressed.

And maybe a tad less nasty.