Your darlings are not an extension of you.
They are separate, distinct, and independent of you.
Their actions, good or bad, do not reflect on you.
Their values are not influenced or dictated by yours.
They can change their minds or adopt a new belief at any time, and there is nothing you can do about it.
You have no input, no say, and no control over what they do.
It is not your job to make statements about their controversies or shortcomings.
If they remain silent, it's not your responsibility to fill that silence.
You are not their spokesperson; nor are you their ethical guardian.
You might find it exhilarating to hold the reins of cancellation, to take your darlings to task for their shortcomings and demand public penance, but your performative outrage is empty at its center. It is not activism. It is theater-- sound and fury signifying nothing.
Petty policing of those near to you does nothing to bring the real Titan down. It dilutes your strength and keeps you paralyzed.
So if your banner-bearers and heroes aren't pure, how can you be? If you can't explain their actions, how will you explain your own?
The truth is that you don't care what people think about your darlings any more than your darlings themselves care. You're deeply, desperately, abjectly afraid of what people think of YOU.
That's what needs to stop.











