The ease with which way too many Americans deal with unpleasantness simply by dismissing it has spread so widely that it has earned a name. Cancel culture.

It has become so widespread that last weekend, the trainer of a racehorse that had tested positive for a banned steroid blamed the report of the doping on cancel culture.

Bob Baffert, the trainer, said, “Cancel culture is coming for me.” He didn’t explain how folks who squirt horse urine into test tubes are cancel culture, but his using the term as a whipping boy is a sure sign that what began as a political correctness has gone too far.

The list of people one or another outfit has tried to cancel is long and growing. Abraham Lincoln, Paul Revere, Robert E. Lee, Kelly Donohue.

Kelly who? Kelly Donohue won “Jeopardy” three times. The third night, he held up his right pinkie, ring and middle fingers, his index finger and thumb tucked under. Some ex- “Jeopardy” players took it as support for QAnon. They circulated a letter asking why “Jeopardy” didn’t excise — that is, cancel — that bit of tape. And 595 ex-players signed it.

The Anti-Defamation League, which exposes hate gesturers, examined the tape and concluded, “It looks like he is simply holding up three fingers (to) say he is a three-time champion. We do not interpret his hand signal to be indicative of any ideology.”

The most prominent cancelers lately may be the U.S. House. Republicans, who voted to cancel Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming. Or at least to cancel her prominence in their party.

Just before they tossed her from the leadership, they held a cancel-bashing spree on the House floor, throwing spears at attempts to cancel, among others, Pepé Le Pew, J.K. Rowling, Miss Piggy and George Washington. Cheney couldn’t have missed the irony.

House Republicans also gave us Rep. Andy Clyde of Georgia, who said the Jan. 6 attack on our Capitol was a “‘normal tourist visit.” Cancel what we all saw with our own eyes.

I’ve spent a lot of time in Bar Harbor, and I never saw tourists smashing windows with bicycle racks or beating a police officer over the head with fire extinguishers. Clyde is trying to cancel the insurrection that took place in our nation’s most hallowed hall.

Let’s move back a bit in time and consider a recent president whom many would like to cancel. No, not that one. I’m thinking of George W. Bush.

In essence, he was elected by the Supreme Court, which halted a recount of votes in Florida before we knew who had won. Soon, bumper stickers proclaimed: “Not my President.” A lousy court decision, but does it justify canceling George W.?

He is most remembered for the invasion of Iraq, a disastrous war whose effects are still mucking up matters in the Middle East. And everywhere else. We wiped out Iraq and found no sign that it had weapons of mass destruction. Or that Saddam Hussein had had anything to do with 9/11. A horrible man, but not responsible for the attack on America.

If history were to rule today on George W. the judgment would be harsh. But we cannot simply cancel his eight years in office. Almost all presidents have been humans. Humans do dumb things. Most humans do worthwhile things, too.

Here are two reasons not to cancel George W. In “Premonition,” Michael Lewis’s book about how America has dealt with COVID-19, we read that Bush, after reading a book on the 1918 flu, asked about plans to deal with a future pandemic. Turned out to be no plans.

So he called seven people from various fields to the White House to work up a plan. I have read far enough in Lewis’s book to know that the Obama White House was not much interested in the plan brought out by the Bush team. But it warmed later to the idea. We all know now that the president who succeeded Obama not only had no use for the plan but closed the office set up to implement if the need arose. As it did three years later.

Second example. A missionary to Uganda and his family visited our church a few years ago. Two of its four children were adopted Ugandans. One had been born HIV positive. But thanks to a program launched by George W., that girl’s medications for HIV are guaranteed for life at no cost. And thanks to that program, her life will be a lot longer.

Uganda may erect a statue of George W. Bush. He did more than about anyone else to stop HIV in a country it devastated. But I don’t expect to see a Bush statue around here.

Yeah, he did some dumb stuff. And, yeah, he did some good stuff. On balance, I wouldn’t put him in a pantheon of the best, say, 20 presidents. But he had a plan for dealing with a pandemic, and I have met a girl from Uganda who is alive because of him.

I didn’t vote for George W. In fact, I have never voted for a Republican for president. (Until 2018 I had never voted for a Democrat for governor.) But I don’t want to cancel him. I just want us to learn from his good deeds as well as from his errors.

Bob Neal agrees with James Baldwin, who decades ago wrote, “When we cannot tell the truth about our past, we become trapped in it.” Neal can be reached at turkeyfarm@myfairpoint.net.

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