>Maybe you agreed with the canceling enough it wasn't noticeable; I cited two specific examples directly related to that day. It was… not a fun time to be anti-war.
I was roughly 12 years old when Iraq was invaded. I was sitting in class staring at the clock and waiting for recess. It was a different political era from my perspective, and it feels a little disingenuous that you keep harping on it. It seems to me that there's been significant turnover in the US political power players since that time, so the hypocrisy accusations don't seem to land very well. Remember that Trump gained popularity with the GOP electorate in part due to his willingness to unequivocally condemn Bush & friends for their middle east misadventures.
>"I don't like you, so I won't associate with you" is deeply ingrained in us.
Sure. But when explaining why they fired Attiah, the Post wrote: "the Company-wide social media policy mandates that all employee social media postings be respectful and prohibits postings that disparage people based on their race, gender, or other protected characteristics".
They're applying the exact standard that progressives requested. It appears to me that they are actually applying it in an even-handed way. If I was a journalist circa 2017, and I made a post suggesting that America was violent because of people caring too much about "black women who espouse hatred and violence", in the wake of a black women recently being murdered, then the risk of progressive dogpiling, and my subsequent termination, would've been extremely high. It's not respectful, and it disparages on the basis of protected characteristics. Remember, Al Franken lost his job (even after he apologized!) for things like squeezing a woman's waist at a party.
I think you're a little fixated on the government thing, as cancel culture is generally speaking a non-governmental phenomenon, regardless of who is doing it to who. At least recently in the US.