Do you think the response of "X doesn't exist" in response to a "culture war" issue is inadequate?

It seems that when confronted with culture war issues like cancel culture, critical race theory, “wokeness”, a common response from the left is to simply dismiss the entire concept: there’s no cancel culture, critical race theory isn’t being taught, “wokeness” is a racist term, etc. It seems to be a common response to many of the questions I ask here, e.g. X is not worth talking about because X is not a thing. And it’s like, sure, academic-level “critical race theory” is not literally being taught in K-12 schools, but pointing that out doesn’t end the discussion nor does it mean there’s nothing there. There are certain ideas about race and identity and intersectionality that have entered K-12 curriculum and some of it may be worth questioning or criticizing. Just because the right’s “moral panic” is being deliberately fanned by bad faith politicians and pundits doesn’t mean there’s nothing to discuss. Likewise for cancel culture: sure, right-wing politicians losing access to Twitter is not a first amendment crisis, but I think it’s worth discussing the extent to which tech companies have too much control over speech and as someone in the academic world, I am concerned about academic censorship, as esoteric an issue as it may be to the general public.

I just think the left needs better responses than “that’s not a thing”. Even if some of the terminology is silly or a lot of the concern is overblown and in bad faith doesn’t mean there’s nothing to it at all. There often is something there that we’re perhaps ignoring. Important questions get overlooked in the surface-level shouting.