Cancel Culture Has No Sentence | Tim Kelley | The MiddleGround Mic

What happens when someone gets canceled — and there’s no way back?

Tim Kelley — MIT alumnus, former Navy commanding officer, global leadership advisor, and founder of canceledleader.com — joins The MiddleGround Mic to make the case that cancel culture’s real crisis is not the cancellation itself. It is the complete absence of any defined path to re-entry.

Tim and Joe cover why Kevin Spacey’s full exoneration in court bought him nothing in Hollywood, what happened to Puerto Rico Governor Ricky Rosselló when a manipulated chat log went viral before anyone checked the facts, why being innocent does not protect you when it becomes a competition of narratives, and what a real “uncanceled” system would actually look like.

If you believe in the political middle — that most people want accountability without permanent exile — this conversation is for you.

canceledleader.com | The MiddleGround Mic

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CHAPTERS

(00:00) Tim Kelley: MIT, Navy, and the Change Agent Mindset
(02:15) Cancel Culture’s Real Problem: No Sentence, No Re-Entry
(06:45) Kevin Spacey — Exonerated in Court, Still Exiled in Hollywood
(10:30) Ricky Rosselló — When a Manipulated Chat Log Ends a Career
(13:45) The Trauma of Ostracism: Why Being Canceled Hits Like Physical Pain
(20:00) False Accusers and the Accountability Gap
(27:30) Who Tim Works With — and Who He Doesn’t
(35:00) The Political Middle: Centrism Isn’t Standing for Nothing
(43:00) How to Actually Help Someone Who’s Been Canceled
(46:40) Find Tim: canceledleader.com

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GUEST

Tim Kelley is a leadership advisor, MIT alumnus, former Navy commanding officer, and founder of canceledleader.com. Tim has spent decades coaching leaders, executives, and public figures through career crises and is one of the leading voices on structured re-entry after cancellation.

Website: canceledleader.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Cancel culture gets talked about a lot. But here's what nobody's talking about. There's no sentence. You get canceled. And that's it. Forever. My guest today, Tim Kelly, is actually doing something about that. I'm Joe. This is the Middle Ground Mic. And this one's gonna make you think.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Alright, everybody, Tim Kelly. Welcome to the Middle Ground Mike. Thanks for being here. I appreciate taking your time and joining us on the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Oh, I'm delighted. This is gonna be very entertaining. I know it already.

SPEAKER_03 0:41

This is the Middle Ground Mike!

SPEAKER_01 0:47

We had a great conversation. I was looking at your resume, I'll tell you before the show. You got my T on there, Navy commanding officer, mobile corporate advisor, and now what you're one of the leading voices on uncancellation/slash really going after the cancel culture. Connect the dots for us on something.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

So I a lot of my adult life I've spent teaching leaders and businesses about purpose. And there's a sort of occupational hazard with that, which is I have to take my own medicine. So I have to, I'm always looking for new and interesting ways to manifest my own purpose in life. And I'm really devoted to trying to create a better society that works for everyone, and something I know you can appreciate in the middle ground sense. And it's surprising how intelligent people who really want to make things better seem to believe that attacking others and making them wrong is the way to do that. And that's just a disease across the political spectrum. And people will generally agree with that, no matter their political beliefs. Are we too politically polarized? Almost anyone will say yes. And then they'll blame the other side for it every time. Those assholes. So it's funny, what I've taken upon myself is trying to help the people who got canceled and didn't deserve to be canceled, or at least didn't deserve to be canceled permanently. And it turns out to be the vast majority of people who get canceled have done either little wrong or no wrong, or they have done something wrong, but we're not giving them a chance to learn from their mistake and do better. When my son was little and he would screw something up, I might get angry at him, I might punish him, whatever, but then I'd show him how to do it correctly. And if he did it correctly the next time, then we're fine. And that seems to be missing in our culture today, right? And there's just no forgiveness available for people who've made mistakes. It's a permanent, it's not a death sentence, it's an exile. It's permanent exile. And they lose their opportunity to make a difference, to contribute, to generate value for other human beings. Many of them are people who would love to be working to create a better world, and they have no opportunity to do so. And it's a tremendous wasted resource. And probably the thing that called me to it more than anything else was seeing how little support those people were getting. If someone's accused of a crime and they have no money whatsoever, we give them a free lawyer to defend themselves, even if they're obviously guilty. They still get a free lawyer and they still get their day in court. And some other whoever wants to accuse them of whatever has to prove their case and their standards that have to be met with the evidence and all this kind of stuff, right? Before we'll take that person's freedom away. And people generally agree that that's how it should be. But that's not how we do it with cancel culture at all.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Well, no, and that brings it to you. What kind of crisis did you witness that really made you realize that this wasn't just bad luck? It was a systemic problem that needed solving, kind of piggybacking off of what you were just saying.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

It's hard to trace it to a specific incident. I will say that over the years, I would sort of accidentally coaching people who'd been thrown out of office, government ministers who'd been deposed, in some cases sent overseas to get rid of them, CEOs who'd been fired, high-level execs who'd been fired, different people where their career took a sudden turn for the worse. And so I was sort of accidentally developing the skill set that I needed for this. And I have this bad habit. I'm something that I like to call a change agent. And my definition of a change agent, you're probably a change agent, sir. My definition of a change agent is someone who feels a personal responsibility for making things better. And those of us who have this disease, it's like a little voice in the back of our heads telling us, go, go ahead, fix it. So I'll be watching the news. I can remember as a teenager watching the news and seeing something going on in the Middle East and thinking, wow, somebody should do something about that. And the little voice in my head says, Yeah, you can't. And so watching the whole cancel culture thing, I realized, you know, I actually know what to do about this. I have the necessary skills, and there's a gap here. There's a problem, right? So when someone gets sent off to prison, a lot of problems with that system, but they're the term, unless you've done something really horrible, the term ends and they release you and they give you your stuff back. And then, you know, depends on where you live and which state and what there are programs and stuff to help people like that find a job and find a place to live and get their driver's license renewed and whatever else they need to function in society. It's not perfect, but there are people trying to solve that problem. And I realized there's nobody trying to help the people who've been canceled. We're just gonna like in the trash can and let them rot for the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years. Very talented people who've spent their adult lives developing highly refined skills that we need. I can't answer the question any better than that.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

I mean, I'll say you were talking a little bit about the port a little bit about Puerto Rico before you know the show.

SPEAKER_02 5:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

F from your end, you're arguing the cancellation itself the real crisis isn't the cancellation itself, but the absence of any defined path back. That's right. You know why is a system with no sentence, no proper resolution, no re-entry dangerous than the initial punishment.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Well, you know, fine as long as it's someone else, right? And then when it's your turn and somebody on social media accuses you of something, and you quickly go in there to say that it's not true, and everyone ignores you and listen to the person who's accusing you, and suddenly your friends aren't returning your calls, and you know, you're applying for a job or trying to get a book published or something like that. And people talk to you and then suddenly they ghost you because they read something online and they're like, oh, well, we don't know, I don't want to deal with that. And when that happens, it doesn't matter whether you're innocent or not. That's the thing that's really shocking to people. Being innocent gets you very far at all in that situation because it's all a competition of narratives. And the narrative of the accuser is almost always more compelling, whether true or false, than the narrative of the defender. And I just recently wrote an article on StubTech about Kevin Spacey about this, right? Now, it's entirely possible that Kevin Spacey did some bad things. I can't say for sure. There's smoke, right? And there might be fire. But what did Kevin Spacey do? Kevin Spacey went to court over and over and over again in different contexts. He did in the UK, he did it in, I think, Massachusetts. Yeah, I remember that one. Faced all of his accusers, and in every case the charges were dropped, or he was found innocent or not liable or whatever, exonerated in a hundred percent of those things. Now, as I said, I don't know whether Kevin Spacey did anything wrong, but it seems like lots of innocent verdicts didn't buy him anything. I mean out of prison, but he's not getting any acting roles anytime soon, right? No, and he believed this is what the article is about, he believed that being exonerated would allow him to resume his acting career. Too bad, right? Now I think it would, but I don't have all the answers, but it seems like an innocent verdict should count for something. Supposed to. Maybe the fact that I'd been accused would be enough.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Well, you know, some people, and I and I've been guilty of this, you know, in the moment, but then when I kind of thought of it, I'm kind of like, that's kind of actually reality here. You know, good. If you cross the line, you should be gone forever. You know, just certain things.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

And your initial reaction is like, man, I'm not seeking Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Ghilane Maxwell as clients. Let's be clear, right? I'm like a dense lawyer who's going to defend everyone. I get to decide who I work with and who I don't. And there's certain people where there is sufficient evidence, and it's in many cases it's been adjudicated in court, right? There is sufficient evidence to say, you know what? This definitely happened. And now I'm not saying that those people couldn't be redeemed, but boy, the bar would be exceedingly high to come back from something like that.

unknown 9:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

I'm much more concerned about guys like Ricky Roseo, the governor of Puerto Rico, where this whole internet chat got published. And it was later shown that the internet chat that was published had been modified too late, already out of office, right? Prosecutor looked into it, no crimes committed, right? So, you know, throw excrement on somebody and smear them much faster than they can scrape it off. And so a polarized environment gets abused by people. And you know, a friend who was a woman was working up a case in HR against him for sexual harassment, which he hadn't done. And I don't know what she was pissed at him about. She was working on this case and everything, and he let it go a long way. And right before she pulled the trigger, he said to her, You do know I'm gay, right? And so she had to drop the whole thing because it was completely implausible. I kind of been inconvenient, but I kind of wish he had let her do it. So, because the false accusers rarely pay any price at all.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Yes. One thousand percent, man. They'll ruin people's lives and walk away with no consequences. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

The other really, that's right. The other really interesting case is the person who did do something wrong. I've had clients who went to prison for financial crimes, say, right? That the person embezzled or, you know, their taxes right or something like that. I had knew one guy who slapped his girlfriend once, right, in front of witnesses. And he got kind of that, right? Understandably. But this is talking about grooming hundreds of 13-year-olds here, right? Or repeated date rape or genocide or anything like that. And so where's the place where we allow someone who actually did make a mistake to learn from that mistake, show that they've learned from that mistake, and then become a contributing member of society again? Because they get treated roughly the same as the serial rapists do. The sentence is almost identical. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

The problem for me is, you know, the insanity of it. You know, like back a little bit to the Puerto Rico, you know. This is inside the war room from your end of it, you know, a little bit more of like the loud, I don't know, and you know, a little bit of insider.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

Right. I wasn't there, I wasn't involved when it happened. I met the governor when he was already an ex-governor and had already written a book about it. Okay. What happens is that the people who get canceled, often I meet them two, three, in some cases, and one woman is a canceled psychiatrist ten years after the fact. And in many cases, they haven't done anything. Definitely not the thing they were accused of, right? And so they're like trying to get back in the game and they don't see a way. And and they're traumatized by this because it's like you're just going about your life, and all of a sudden, no one will talk to you, right? You get fired, and then no one will talk to you. And it's so being ostracized, we're herd animals, we humans, right? We evolved living in tribes 10, maybe 200, somewhere in that range, right? Probably usually between about 50 and 250 or something like that. Or you know, we'll say 150, something 200, something 250. There's a little debate about how big those tribes got. But that's where we grew up. And if you lived in one of those tribes and the tribe threw you out, that was probably it. You're probably dead, right? And so we're we take very poorly to being ostracized. It stimulates the same circuits in the brain as physical pain, and it's traumatic. And so whether the person did the thing they're accused of or not, when they get canceled, they're traumatized, right? And there's not a support network set up for them, right? There's no one's trying to help them deal with the trauma. Often they don't even know they're traumatized because people think about trauma from like near a bombing or in a car accident or having a limb or watching a loved one die, or those things happen. We geez, I've been traumatized. I need to like therapy or something. But what about when people put a bunch of stuff about you on Facebook? Turns out that's trauma too.

unknown 13:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

And so often I'm helping them kind of that they've been traumatized and helping them clean it up. And sometimes I have to refer them to you know, help or something if they you know, I'm not a therapist. So if it's mild, I can, you know, some suggestions. But if it's severe, they need someone who's qualified for that stuff, right? And so even just explaining to them that they're probably traumatized is support, right? So they have to get through that first. And then after that, they have to find a way to make meaning of what's happened. And we're meaning-making machines. We human, we want to understand everything. We understand not just what happened, but why it happened. And until we understand why something happened, we can't really get past it. And so these people have to understand why this happened. And if they can come up with a better why than this happened randomly to me and I didn't deserve it, that's not a very good why. It might be factually accurate, but it's not a good why at all. If we can get past that and learn from the event and evolve as a result of the event, then they get to have a life. Then now they can move forward. And they can actually use what they've learned to try to have other people allow them to move forward, if that makes sense, right? The collective generally has to say, okay, you can get on with your life. It's all right. We willing to, you know, go to the store and have a job and have a relationship and the stuff that the rest of us take for granted, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:55

And that's man, you you don't even realize how much of those things you know take for granted until you're in that situation. And you're it was something that was just so automatic, like putting shoes in now, it's gone. And a lot of people don't think about it when they're in that.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

You can walk out your door because there's a crowd of people screaming on on your lawn.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Not wrong, not one bit. Burn millions, you know, tens of millions, you know, when I was reading some of your stuff. Why is it almost always a waste of money from what you've seen? What's what a waste of money? Well, you know, just dumping millions and millions into these PR firms when they're being canceled.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Yeah, so the poor that does exist for canceled people generally takes two forms. One is PR firms, and the other is lawyers. The lawyer thing can be useful in a couple different ways. One is, like I one guy is a doctor who's accused of battery for touching the belly of a female patient who scheduled an appointment with him and met him in his doctor's office, put on a smock because she was having abdominal symptoms. And I'm like, really? So you should. I mean, that's what they're supposed to do. So he has to hire lawyers because he'll go to prison if he doesn't defend himself properly. And he's using losing his medical license in all the different states. Even though the court case hasn't happened yet, the mere fact that he's been accused, no adjudication whatsoever, the fact that she lodged the accusation is sufficient to get his medical lice canceled in like states or something. Really? We don't interested in vetting the facts of the case before ruining this guy's career. So that's one thing you need a lawyer for, stay out of prison. The other one is, and this is uh another case I'm thinking of of a guy whose ex-girlfriend went on an absolute rant online, accusing him of all sorts of stuff. And so he uh did a defamation suit against her, not because she's gonna get any money from her for that, just to have a judge tell her to stop and to take the stuff down, right? So that's the other thing. Neither of those solves the cancellation problem, though, unfortunately. The PR firms can help more directly in that they can go online on your behalf and actually put up a fight with the people who are the trolls. Often in these cases, people generally have whatever opinion they have, but there's a small number of people who are actively going after this person ruthlessly. And like I know of cases where the trolls are absolutely lied their butts off, and they're now the subject of criminal activity because of all the things. Troll can be vicious, so that's a small number of people. But a number of my clients have a couple of trolls who follow them around. It's sort of like having your own personal demon walking around three feet behind you waiting for you to say or do anything. And it's like, oh my god, that would be horrible, right? So uh so they you know the problem goes back to this competition of narratives, right? And so what I try to explain that the the quote that you you saw that you found interesting, innocence is not a defense in the court of cancel culture. The reason is because humans make decisions with emotion and justify them with logic.

unknown 18:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

And if you're wondering how did thus and such person get elected or whatever, there's your answer, right? That's why. Why did this person do this crazy thing? Could be someone you knew. Maybe marry her, you know. People make decisions with emotion, just with logic. That's why people sell stocks right after a market crash. Everyone will tell you that is the exact wrong time to sell stocks. And every time the market crashes, a bunch of people sell their stocks, right? Why? Emotion. So here's the problem with that. If I've been accused of doing something wrong, the person saying all the stuff about the horrible stuff I did to them, that will generate a lot of emotion in you, the listener. Whether it's true or false, it will generate a lot of emotion. When I say, oh no, I didn't do those things, and here's the proof, that generates almost no emotional more emotion, wins. So the accuser prevails, not because my narrative is false, not because their narrative is true. They prevail because their narrative evokes emotion and mine does not. And so that's fundamentally what I'm doing with my clients. So some of them just helping them get on with their lives. I'll find a new purpose and a new path, a new way to make a difference. But many of them, they want the public to view them differently. And the solution to that is to have a true narrative about their experience and what happened to them and what they learned and how they grew and how they're going to make the world a better place. And that narrative has to be more emotionally compelling than the narrative of the person who accused them. That's the only way. That's your let-out of jail free card. And that's tricky to do and almost impossible to do by yourself. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

I'm thinking about that. What makes someone uncancelable? So I before. Yes. I don't know if you've ever heard of uh Tom McDonald.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

I have heard of him, but I don't remember who he is. I'm turbo with names.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

He's he's kind of woke rapper, is kind of where the people put him in there. And he's like, if I remember correctly, he's 100% independent, doesn't have a record label, doesn't have a distributor, he distributed it through his friend's warehouse. So he can literally just say whatever he wants. There's no apparently. Yeah, it goes, and they tried to cancel me on now worth 30 million dollars.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

Yeah, and there are people who say things that are offensive, and there are people who say things that are deliberately offensive. And it's okay to be upset with those people. I'm fine with that. It's okay not to buy his albums, right? It's okay, all that stuff is cool. So I spent a lot of time in the military, and one of the things we do right on day one is take an oath to defend the Constitution. And freedom of speech is pretty close to the beginning. That's in the First Amendment, right? It's not in the basic stuff about there will be a president and a vice president of Congress, right? But the very first thing they added after that was about freedom of speech. And so I've been around other military people who are saying, I can't believe these people say this thing. Someone should stop them. And I say, you know, an oath to defend that person's right to say that. Yes. Boy, do they look unhappy when I say that to them. It's it's the only thing I remember either. Like I absolutely disagree with everything. I think you are a horrible human freedom thinking those things, much less saying them. And it's still my job to make sure you have a right to say it. And that's we've we've got one along the way somewhere, right? I remember just because I disagree with you doesn't mean you shouldn't be allowed to talk.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

Right. Yes. In the nineties, I believe if I'm quoted, is I may not agree with you, but I'll I'll defend your right to say whatever you want or something along those lines. I just remember hearing it all the time.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

Right. Same same thing as like, you know, do a march through my town. I can stand there and boom all my want, but you know. Blah blah blah boy on the right and left have terrible trouble this one, terrible trouble with it because the narratives are so polarized. Our narrative is right, their narrative is wrong. How do we keep their narrative from spreading as if it were a disease or something like that? And I don't think that's an effective way to live together in a country. I don't think that's useful. I don't think it's productive. And in fact, the research on collective intelligence would say it's actively counterproductive. That if you want a group to be smart, a group of people who are going to make decisions to be as smart as possible, you don't want them all to agree. You actually want a diversity of opinion and an even cognitive diversity, meaning things people think about things completely differently than each other. And if you have that, those and allow the group to work its stuff out, you will get far better solutions than if you start with a group who all have the same basic political opinion and view the world the same way at the outset. You will get pathological results if you do that. And so us all being in our little camps like that makes us collectively, not individually, collectively stupid.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

Yeah, have yes men around you. That's the number one thing in leadership. You gotta have somebody, I'd say I'd rather have somebody look me in the face and tell me, fuck you, per se. And then, you know, honest with me, we go, okay, what's the real problem here? Now let's try to solve it.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

That's how humans are actually naturally wired. We've just tried to train ourselves to not be that way.

SPEAKER_00 23:35

Well, it's it's a consequence of various things like the way the political system works, it favors polarization. Yes. The way the social media algorithms work favor polarization. If you and I went and put the same search terms in Google, we would get different results.

unknown 23:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Because Google would filter those results based on what it knows about our beliefs and opinions. And so I can become an echo chamber of want by talking to AIs and doing Google searches and watching YouTube videos, because all of those things will learn what my opinions are and what I want to see and want to hear and feed me more and more and more of it, and figure out what outrages me and feed me more of that too. Right. Regardless of my political views. And so we create all these little mini echo chambers like that. And now when someone says or does something we don't like, oh my god, they're evil and must be destroyed.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

I mean, you don't want them to be destroyed, but I mean they haven't done nothing serious. You know, a little spectrum, because that's where you seem to really sell. What can a leader do that? I mean, I want to make yourselves uncancelable.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Yeah, you're out being uncancelable. I didn't answer the question. Thank you for coming back to that. Yeah, arrogant or you know, sociopath. So, so it's interesting. It it can be difficult to cancel narcissists and sociopaths, actually, because of the self-reinforcing nature of their narratives. But so what makes someone uncancelable is if they're willing to learn and grow from anything. And so if you're another one that really helps is having a purpose, and I'll explain why. So one of the things I coach the leaders who I'm uncanceling to do is get super, super on their purpose in life. What is the big thing that you're gonna do in the with the however many years you have left that's gonna benefit Earth, society, me, everybody else? Like what plan for making this planet better than it was when you arrived? And I and they have to find something that they actually really care about enough that they'd be willing to devote a significant amount of time and energy to it because they're so passionate about it. And it only works if it's authentic, if it's like a thing that doesn't work, right? And here's how that helps, which is if you're actively engaged in trying to make the world a better place, and I hear that you've done something bad, and I'm thinking about, you know, here's this thing, do I want to cancel them? Yes or no? I now have to weigh the cost. If I cancel you, I don't get that better world that you're trying to create. So I better really want to cancel you, right? If you're gonna solve global warming or poverty or something like that, and I know that if I cancel you, that's not gonna happen. I'm using extreme examples, but just to illustrate the point, right? If I know that I'm not gonna get that future that I would love because I've canceled you, then that makes me less eager to cancel you. Does that make sense? No, it makes sense. I'm weighing the cost, not necessarily consciously. And you can see this in examples like Michael Jackson and R. Kelly, where there's a lot of people who just love their music. And I put on on my website, cancelleader.com, in the resources, I put on this hilarious little clip from I think it's from the Daily Show or something, where respondent is talking about why he doesn't want to believe that R. Kelly did all these bad things because then he can't listen to his music anymore. I mean, that's and never got canceled despite a lot of smoke. No, fence, never a guilty verdict, you know. Boy, if I were a betting man, you know, I would just bet there was something going on. I don't know exactly what something going on there. So you want to make it too costly for other people to cancel you because you're doing so much good, because you've learned so much from the cancellation experience, whether you were guilty or innocent, because you've evolved into a better leader because of what happened, and now you're gonna use your improved leadership skills that you got from growing and evolving as a result of this event to create a better world, right? And it's funny, if in the case of, like I said, Dave Chappelle is my best example of this. So Dave Chappelle loves to crack jokes at the expense of trans people, right? The trans people are not amused by this, nor are their friends, and worked very hard to get him canceled. And so he went on a Netflix special and explained why they had failed, which I thought was fascinating. And that's I actually encourage my clients to watch it. It's called The Dreamer. And what he says in that, I have a quote on my website about that. What he says about that is he says, in any given moment, the person with the biggest dream wins that moment. I am a very powerful dreamer. So what he's saying is, my dream of free speech and everyone being a legitimate target for humor, and me wanting to do my particular brand of humor, da-da-da, my dream for doing that is a more powerful dream than certain elements of the trans community. I'm not saying it's all of them by any stretch, certain elements of the trans community who would like to see me cancel. That's basically what he's saying. And it's what I was saying either, right? Most compelling narrative wins. That's what I said before. Because people make decisions with emotion and justify them with logic. I mean, you're right.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

That's spot on when you're thinking about it like that. You know, so I the power dynamic, right? You know, that's kind of like Yes, it can be considered controversial, right? But to me, it's got to be some of the most important part of thinking what you do, right? Because power is trying to think of the movement, but power is everything. You know, the core weapon of cancel culture, no exclusion, reputation destruction, is a form of toxic femininity.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

That's right. Toxic feminine power. So the the Megan McCardell of the Washington Post is the one who first used that term. I was trying to get an article out I wanted it, but she beat me, so she gets credit. So I use the term, geez, what am I? Oh, shadow feminine power is what I use. Toxic femininity is a little harsh for my taste, but it's not wrong. Shadow feminine power is perhaps a little more spot on. It's a very interesting social phenomenon that I don't know, you read up on the green meme and spiral dynamics, if you're really like listeners, if you want to really get into this. I'm not going to go into that much detail, but you can find it in there. And it's a form of win-lose thinking that is very much about defending the underdog, the environment, the earth, disenfranchised people, all that stuff, which is entirely appropriate, right? I'm I'm for all of those things. The issue is that the way it's done by the people who are absorbed in this, and in in the US and in many other countries, it's the far progressive left that exhibits this phenomenon, is that basically if you don't agree with us, you're a horrible person, right? If your views or your language deviates at all from what we deem to be correct and acceptable, even though what's correct and acceptable seems to evolve every six months or so, right? It's not just LBQ anymore. It's now like 10 long or something. It keeps growing. I can't keep up, right? So this, but that's the correct term. And if you're doing anything else, that's wrong, even though that was right yesterday, it's not right today, right? Very unforgiving, which is terrible salesmanship, by the way. If I want to change your mind about something, if I want you to think differently about gender or the environment or some something that you have perceived to be settled and not something that's changing, and I want to convince you, no, I want you to rethink this. I want you to think about this very differently. Attacking you and making you wrong for holding a view that lots of people have held for thousands of years isn't a great first move in a sales process. Rather than saying I like to persuade you to view the world differently, that would not be the right first move. So this is a big beef I have with the fire progressive left, because I actually appreciate what they're trying to do, like trying to make it legal and safe for gay people or Muslims or Asians or trans people to live in society alongside the rest of us and have jobs and have lives and you know, do all the stuff that the rest of us do, back to, you know, both to defend the constitution, all for it. Whether I personally find those individuals people I would want to hang out with or not, that's an entirely personal decision. But that they have a right to do that, no question, in my mind. Yes, right. 1,000 men. No trouble separating those two, right? So I absolutely salute the far left's desire to improve the lot of these people. So it's not okay to just crap on them and destroy their lives because they're part of this ethnic group or this religious minority or whatever. Totally there. But then demanding that everyone else think or view a certain way or speak a certain way as the means, that's very difficult. And so here's where the toxic femininity comes in. Think back to junior high school, how the boys are behaving, how the girls are behaving, right? So the boys are exhibiting toxic masculinity. We're talking about like 13 years old, 15 years old. That's when the hormones start to kick in and the impulse control hasn't shown up yet. So, you know, beat you up and take your lunch money and then give you a wedgie and knock throw your books down the stairs, right? I mean, I'm I'm flashbacks here.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Oh no, I get it. I was there once too.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

I'll be completely honest, at different times I was on either side of that dynamic. I've been there, definitely been there, man. And so when we see that in adults, we call it toxic masculinity. Yes, and that's fair, right? If I were to walk into your studio and beat you up because I didn't like something that you had said, not appropriate behavior for an adult. We also punish 13-year-olds for it, but we're a little more forgiving because we understand that they're still learning how to drive the vehicle, right? So that's that's so people who may, it's not males, but it's often males, who use their power with complete disregard for the impact on others, we call that toxic masculinity when it's being done in that kind of overt way. So I've decided that I'm going to bomb your country for no reason or whatever, right? So uh, but one of the things society's been involved in for the past hundred years or so is elevating women's level of power in society. Entirely appropriate, in my view, right? I remember as a kid wondering why we are, yeah, like the equal rights thing just didn't make any sense to me. I have like a mind of like, what? One of the consequences of that is that we get more collaboration, more creativity, more emotional intelligence in executive suites and boardrooms and stuff like that when you add more women, right? Back to that thing about everyone not agreeing and thinking about things differently, more collective intelligence, all good. The other thing you get with that is the shadow of it, the dark side of it, which is what the teenage girls are doing in junior high. What are they doing? Well, they're usually not beating each other up, usually not. They express power differently. There, it's who's in and who's out, and who are we whispering about behind her back? And who are we not inviting to the sleepover? And who are we shaming without the person knowing where it's coming from? And all this inclusion, exclusions. So the light side of that is inclusion, and that's the stated goal with progressive life. More inclusion. Great. The shadow of it is exclusion. You didn't say the pronouns correctly. Now no one will ever talk to you again, right? So that exile, the tarring and feathering, the that exclusion thing, that's a feminine power dynamic. And I'm not saying it's only being done by women, it's being done by men too. Just like you give women a lot of political power, and sometimes you get to see toxic masculinity displayed by them as well, right? So now we have to deal more with both, and we have a lot more experience recognizing and dealing with toxic masculinity at scale, like anxiety, than we do toxic femininity, right? That's why we have things like impeachment clauses and stuff like that, is because of the understanding that if you give someone enough power, they might start abusing it and you might regret it, and you might want to take it away from them. Now, those systems don't work perfectly, but we don't have anything like that for dealing with the toxic feminine power. Nothing even close. It's not even talked about barely. Right, people complain about cancel culture, but they're not seeing it through this lens. This is a large-scale social phenomenon, and we don't have experience designing guardrails for it, and we're paying a heavy price.

SPEAKER_01 36:22

I mean, we are uh you see some of these politicians, especially when on the female, and then I'm not saying all women, but you know, when they're I mean, listening or watching, you know, that know exactly what I'm talking about that pops in your head in some scenario, they will try to use that same sort of assertiveness that toxic masculinity does.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

It's just a different person, you know, different gender, you know, just going in like both sets of traits. There's there's very broadly some, you know, one way or the other, which I'm writing about in a book on the brilliant of the male mind, there are gender differences and they are in part biological, but humans are extremely adaptable. And so we can learn all sorts of different behaviors during our lifetime. We're we're good at it. And so men and women are learning to wield overt hierarchical power at bigger and bigger scale, and men and women are learning how to play this inclusion, exclusion, femininity game as well.

SPEAKER_01 37:16

Yeah, and I mean, you know, here you want to wrap it up. You know, person, leader, whoever really listening right now and is already in a professional exile, or you know, feel it coming, you know, like I mean, not for cancellation reasons, but I don't know that for sure.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

But you know, imagine a few people who put the crosshairs on you, metaphorically speaking, Joe. Yeah, yeah. If I had to guess, I would say you've taken a few controversial stances along the way, and a few people might have taken a light swing at you.

SPEAKER_01 37:45

Just a little bit, you know, especially doing the show that I've learned this. You gotta try to bite your tongue sometimes. There's been times where I haven't, and I've popped back, and then I'm like, gotta take that step back, you know.

SPEAKER_00 37:55

But things belong only as thoughts, Joe. Yes, yes, you know, and you know freedom of thought, too, just like I'm in freedom of speech. But you'll notice I'm not, you know, a lot of political vitriol here like this happening on the left and the right, you know, not thrilled about living in a society this polarized because we're at risk of breaking the system if we keep going down this path. And I do not want to live in a country that has a broken system.

SPEAKER_01 38:21

Well, I mean, the very first realistic step, outside of calling you, um, that's the take towards getting back in the game.

SPEAKER_02 38:28

Yep. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

Very first step is dealing with the trauma. And and who are being canceled are panicked. Panicked. Understandably so. There's all sorts of ramifications that come from this, that which are bad, and many of which are unpredictable, and and sort of like, you know, a sort of sliding down a cliff face trying to get purchase as you're going over the edge and realizing, wow, this is not going well. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to stop this, right? That's how they feel. Okay. And I that some of these people would call me sooner because I could actually help significantly while it's happening. But what I found is when they're that panicked, the way I'm talking and thinking about this is too strategic for them. And when people are panicked, the hind brain takes over, right? This is why people sell their stocks after a market crash is a very primitive part of the brain called the amygdala on the hippocampus takes over. And it's the part that's designed to get you to run from a lion, right? It's not super strategic and sophisticated. And so the people start reacting and often make things substantially worse because of the things they do and they say in this reactive, hindbrain, primitive kind of way. If I could get to them sooner and help them deal with the trauma sooner, that would stop and they could start taking genuine strategic corrective moves. But that trauma, that's the first thing, because as long as they're traumatized, whenever the topic comes up, they're likely to say or do something that will make it worse. And you the first step is to stop digging the hole.

SPEAKER_01 40:01

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. You know, I where can people find you? Where they can get a hold of you, follow your work.

SPEAKER_00 40:06

Canceledleader.com. I tried to make it really simple. Canceledleader.com. And even if you haven't been canceled, go to the resources page and watch the little clips and stuff. There's there's you know the link to the uh to the Pell special, there's a link to the daily show thing on R. Kelly. There's some good fun stuff there and some articles, some which I wrote, some which other people wrote. Uh link to my Substack article about Kevin Spacey and Ricky Roseo. And it's it's being fun. But it's if someone's been canceled, about to be canceled, those are the people you really want to talk to and help. And you can reach me through that site.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

Okay, everybody. Don't forget to check that out that'll all be the link will be down here at the bottom, and then it'll also be down in the description. Uh, you know, it's all that stuff, and it'll be in the article. Tim Kelly, I I really appreciate you coming on and taking your time today. Like I told you earlier, when I seen that, I was like, I've got to talk to this guy. Like, I've got to, I've got to get him on there, and you know you see certain things and you're like, yeah, that's the I gotta get that.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

Well, I I really wanted to support you. You know, I know you well enough to know whether I agree with all of your views or not. I'm sure I don't. Nobody does. Nobody says, right. Any random person I meet on the street, the chances that I'm gonna agree with them about everything are pretty much zero, right? But the thing I really appreciate about what you're doing, Joe, is is this idea of the middle ground, like we've center in our political debate. There's a huge mass of people in the center who have slightly varying views on different things, but they're cows in the middle. And though our government is supposed to represent people's desires and views, and every year those people have less representation because the people on the far extreme right and the far extreme left are getting more representation proportionally compared to the the population, right? It's not how the system is designed to work. And so I always try to help Ricky Roset is another one of these. My son is another. I'm always trying to help people who are trying to shore up the political middle. We don't all have to agree, we do have to get along, and we do have to solve the problems we're facing together. And so I salute you and I support you for trying to shore up the middle.

SPEAKER_01 42:14

I make some YouTube shorts, kind of pick streams, you know, I'll be like, oh my God, look at this guy, then look at that. But 99% of my content's about like, hey, how do we find the balance? But I'm not gonna lie, I do take a little bit of a pleasure, kind of the extremes and kind of like all entitled little snarkiness and yeah, you know, and I'm like, uh, you know, sometimes, but I'll also tell people out there, be like, hey, I'm I'm a middle of the ground person, but there's a lot of instances where I'll side with the right, or there'll be instances where I side with the left. Depends on the topic. I think that's perfectly normal. Yep. And people they they don't agree with that, and then the common thing with centerism is is they'll go, that means you don't stand for anything.

SPEAKER_00 42:51

Not true at all. It means what I stand for doesn't fit neatly in in either of the prepackaged sets of beliefs that I'm supposed to subscribe to. You said it's spot on, man.

SPEAKER_02 43:04

Joked up about it. That's all right.