"Cancel Culture"

I don't actually know what "cancel culture" means.  It's a phrase used by right wingers, and the context is usually something about honoring, elevating, or even mentioning, either minorities or the frankly embarrassing aspects of American history.  The idea seems to be that to focus on anything but the preferred majority, or to call into question perfectly well-established past American bad behavior, somehow criticizes, or shames, or casts a negative light on Americans today.  So, we ban books, and tell teachers what facts they're not allowed to reveal.  That's not "cancel culture," is it?

Setting aside the fact that past American misbehavior is not reliably in the past, even if it was, what would be the problem with acknowledging it?  Because it might lead present day Americans who share traits with historical misbehaving Americans to feel bad, as if about themselves?  Those who do not study history... they say.

But there is certainly a movement, incoherent and inconsistent though it is, to want all that misbehavior, all those embarrassing mistakes, no longer to be mentioned.  About Americans.

But Americans do not adopt the same attitude about people who are not Americans.  The argument in opposition to, for example, removing commemorative sculptures of Confederate figures is that this was part of our history, it should be preserved, and even honored for its pluck, and some Americans frankly have not lost a sense of pride in the CSA.

It never made any sense for this country to declare war on Iraq, and the impetus to have done it was built on lies, but invade and defeat we did.  The leader of Iraq at the time was Saddam Hussein.  It's entirely possible that Hussein was more taken with himself than he should have been, but there were large commemorative statues of him, during his life.  As soon as Iraq was defeated by the United States, those statues were pulled down, in very public and unceremonious ways.  But not one American argued against removing and destroying that part of Iraq's history.  I don't know if there are statues of Lenin and Stalin, or Mao, but no Americans express the hope that if there are, they are left in all their glory, as symbols of the history of the Soviet Union or communist China.  If there were any statues of Hitler, no Americans suggest that such honorable and historic commemorations be preserved, as actual, or even proud, mementos of German history.

We have no problem canceling the "bad" culture of other countries, but some of us can't figure out why it's a bad idea to honor our own failings.