Say what you will about the New Atheists...
They stood for debate. There was an intellectualism to it even if not all its proponents were philosophically rigorous (though I fault Sam Harris's "The Moral Landscape" less than most). They went away. Trump got elected. Then Charlie Kirk gets shot. Say what you will about him, he also stood for debate. And Trump is very serious about silencing his opponents however he can. Free speech in America was always sort of penned in by what it was communally appropriate to say, and that was true of the founding of the country no less than it is true of left and right today. But we had a culture of tolerated dissent. It hasn't always worked out well for us. The Civil War is an obvious breakdown of this. And it did us little good in the Gilded Age or the Depression. But this seems to be failing us again. The right hates the left with a passion, and the left is stuck with trying to manage a fascist President. Tolerated dissent isn't really a thing anymore. Intergroup dialogue, debate, is not a popular thing. I'm not talking about scripted youtube series or podcasts, I'm talking about legitimate opening up to legitimate points and meeting or admitting you cannot meet them in a case. It might touch someone's sacred cow. And we can't have that, it isn't polite. Which is just an overreach of things like politeness. People need to talk to each other more instead of interacting with bots.
