Iconoclast : Ideas That Have Shaped The Culture Wars

The culture wars are raging again. The term, which gained popular usage in the United States in the 1920s to describe the ideological divide between those with progressive versus conservative beliefs, now pits a coalition of conservatives and classical liberals against those who adhere to a far-left, postmodern ideology. Iconoclast: Ideas That Have Shaped the Culture Wars is an anthology of essays by, and interviews with, some of the world’s most prominent public intellectuals on many of the social, cultural, philosophical, scientific, and political issues that have defined the culture wars of the last two decades. In an age of post-truth, the ideas expressed in this anthology will challenge many commonly held ideological beliefs. The modern culture wars are more than just a battle between the left and the right; they are a desperate struggle over which ideas are politically, socially, and morally acceptable – and who may express those ideas. It is a war over the definition of truth itself. Iconoclast: Ideas That Have Shaped The Culture Wars Edited by Mark Halloran Ph.D. Iconoclast: Ideas That Have Shaped The Culture Wars Edited by Mark Halloran Ph.D. Academica PressWashington~London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Halloran, Mark (author) Title: Iconoclast : ideas that have shaped the culture wars | Halloran, Mark. Description: Washington : Academica Press, 2022. | Includes references. Identifiers: LCCN 2022939776 | ISBN 9781680532661 (hardcover) | 9781680532678 (paperback) | 9781680532685 (e-book) Copyright 2022 Mark Halloran Iconoclasm:A Very Brief History of the Culture Wars vii References xix Mark Halloran On COVID19 and Times of Plague 27 References 49 Based on an interview with Nicholas Christakis Postmodernism and the Failure of Moral Triage 55 References 73 Based on an interview with Peter Boghossian Me, She, He, They: Reality vs. Identity in the 21st Century 77 References 93 Heather Heying On Free Speech Absolutismand the Deontological Pursuit of Truth 97 References 119 Based on an interview with Gad Saad Let Us Prey: On Islamic Immigrationin Europe and Women’s Rights 125 References 141 Based on an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali On DarkHorse, Ivermectin and Vaccine Hesitancy 143 References 158 Based on an interview with Eric Topol Black Politicized Lives Matter 163 References 176 Heather Mac Donald Making Evolutionary Sense of Sex and Gender 179 References 195 Jennifer A. Marshall Graves Stories and Data: Reflections on Race, Riots, and Police 199 References 205 Coleman Hughes In Defense of Free Speech 209 References 226 Based on an interview with James Flynn Acknowledgments 229 Iconoclasm: A Very Brief History of the Culture Wars References ‘Culture war’ – even the term itself has historically been contentious and divisive. In America, it originated and gained popular usage in the 1920s, to describe the conflict between urban and rural America; between those who possessed liberal, progressive values and those who held to traditional, conservative beliefs.1 In the 1990s, the term was reintroduced into the cultural zeitgeist by University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter, with the publication of Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America.2 Hunter argued that on a number of defining issues – abortion, gun ownership, separation of church and state, homosexuality etc., society had been divided into two warring factions – however these factions were not designated by the traditional markers of nominal religion, ethnicity, social class, or political affiliation but rather by two incommensurate ideological world views.2 Then, in April 2015, two months before Donald Trump officially launched his bid for the US presidency, historian Andrew Hartman published A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars. In the book Hartman recounts the history of the culture wars of late 20th century America, where the New Left of the 1960s; the radical antiwar, feminist, Black Power activists, overturned much of the racism and conventional gender and sexual biases of ‘normative’ America. In the conclusion, Hartman tells us that the ‘culture wars are now history.’3 Alas, much like Francis Fukuyama’s prognosis of ‘The End of History’4 the end of the modern culture wars seems nowhere in sight. ~ This book contains many of the ideas that have shaped the culture wars of the last two decades. Iconoclast, as a title, may seem somewhat hyperbolic. I know that the term had been used in reference to the New Atheist writer; the late Christopher Hitchens,5 but perhaps it is best reserved for historical figures of the magnitude of Galileo. Regardless, this is a book about ideas and the conflicts that come with expressing those ideas. It is also a very brief history. So let us now examine, fleetingly, some of the events that have shaped the latest culture wars. ~ In October 2015, sociologist and physician Nicholas Christakis and his wife Erica Christakis, who is a lecturer in early childhood studies, apologised for the hurt they had caused students and resigned from their positions as Co-Masters of Silliman College, Yale. This occurred due to student protests instigated by an email that Erica had sent to all Silliman students in regards to Halloween costumes. Erica’s email was in response to an earlier email by Yale’s Intercultural Affairs Committee which warned students to avoid wearing inappropriate and culturally insensitive costumes for Halloween. In recent years, it had become common practice for universities to send out such emails – this had been in response to students wearing offensive costumes and blackface.6 Erica enquired in her email if students wanted to hand over these decisions to university administrators. Erica stated that ‘American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition.’ This resulted in an open letter, which 740 students signed, criticising Erica and Nicholas for downplaying the concerns of students of colour.6 In the aftermath, Nicholas Christakis decided to engage the students in a civil discussion. This resulted in 2-hour long debate where Christakis was surrounded by an angry crowd of protesting students, which was filmed from multiple angles, and subsequently became viral on social media.7 Christakis discussed the events on an episode of the then Waking Up podcast with Sam Harris titled Facing the Crowd.8 Harris commended Christakis for his patience and calmness in the face of truculence of the students. Harris wondered at one point how Yale students, who he stated are ‘objectively some of the most privileged people who have ever lived ... Whatever the colour of their skin’ could have acted this way. Christakis defended the students, saying that the ideas that the students expressed in relation to social constructionism had some merit; only they had been taken too far. Christakis had argued with the students in favour of the values of classical liberalism and human universality. In Iconoclast I discuss with Christakis the importance of free enquiry to the mission of the university and his book Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live.9 We discuss the evidence for the lab leak hypothesis, the issues surrounding the racialization of the American healthcare system, and his idea that the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests were not only a direct result of the murder of George Floyd and a history of racialized police violence in America, but also by the anxiety of living in a time of plague. Christakis’s view is that whether it is the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riots, or BLM, no-one should have been gathering in the streets to protest during the pandemic. ~ Evergreen State College is a public liberal arts and sciences college in Olympia, Washington which drew national attention in 2017. Evergreen had a tradition – the annual Day of Absence, which was based on the idea from a 1965 play of the same name by Douglas Ward Turner, whereby minority students and faculty would spend the day off campus to discuss campus issues and to highlight their contribution via their absence.10 Following the election of Donald Trump, Evergreen decided to reconceptualised the event, stating that undocumented migrants on campus were in fear of deportation, and wanted to hold a symbolic event that reaffirmed that students belong on campus. Therefore, instead of minority students and faculty leaving the campus they asked that white people leave the campus. After the policy was announced, Bret Weinstein, faculty member and evolutionary biologist, sent an email in protest of the change which read: There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and under-appreciated roles ... and a group or coalition encouraging another group to go away. The first is a forceful call to consciousness, which is, of course, crippling to the logic of oppression. The second is a show of force, and an act of oppression in itself. Protest activists stated that students were angered by Weinstein’s emails but this was not what triggered the protests.11 In May 2017 police apprehended two black students from their dorms at midnight due to a non-physical altercation in the cafeteria that day – the white student was not taken in for questioning. The protesters claim Weinstein came out of his classroom and confronted the students who were protesting this, agitating them, and when the police arrived they believed that Weinstein had called them. Weinstein then appeared on right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson and the protesters claimed that Weinstein failed to correct Carlson who stated that white people were being forced to leave campus and that the protest was in regards to Weinstein’s email alone.12 Weinstein and his wife, the evolutionary biologist Heather Heying, tell a different version of events.13,14 They tell the story of the new college president George Bridges, who, on taking the position, significantly increased administration and fostered an environment of radical political ideology. Bridge’s consistent acquiescence to the extreme demands of student protestors created an environment where the protestors were embolden to take control of the campus. Film of Bridges essentially being denigrated and humiliated by protestors is harrowing viewing.15 Weinstein and Heying left their positions with the college and filed a $3.8 million suit against the college alleging that the college had ‘permitted, cultivated, and perpetuated a racially hostile and retaliatory work environment.... Through a series of decisions made at the highest levels, including to officially support a day of racial segregation, the college has refused to protect its employees from repeated provocative and corrosive verbal and written hostility based on race, as well as threats of physical violence.’ Weinstein and Heying were awarded $500,000 and the college admitted no liability and rejected the allegations of the tort claim.10 In Iconoclast Heying writes about non-binary identity and the reality of the pronoun ‘they’ in an essay that came about in response to an article written by Anne Fadiman for Harper’s Magazine titled “All My Pronouns.”16 Heying argues for the distinction between biological and sociological categories and that linguistic terms have to be tethered to the reality of humans being a sexually dimorphic species. ~ On March 2, 2017, Charles Murray, a social scientist and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute was scheduled to give a talk at Middlebury college. Murray was the co-author, with the late Richard J. Hernstein, of the controversial New York Times bestseller The Bell Curve which was released in 1994;17 a book about the stratification of American society based on intelligence, which contained a chapter on race and IQ. A crowd of 400 protestors, predominantly students, filled the Wilson Hall in McCullough Student Center, carrying signs and chanting slogans. This caused Murray and the moderator of the event, Middlebury College Professor Allison Stanger to relocate to a locked room where they could conduct the Q&A via video link. After the completion of the talk, Murray and Stanger walked to their cars, where they were surrounded by angry protestors, who tried to block their path. During this altercation, Stanger was injured and required medical treatment for a concussion.18,19 Middlebury had become the latest flashpoint in the intensifying culture wars on college campuses. Major news outlets such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal condemned the actions of the protestors, and schools such as Middlebury gained a reputation as being intolerant of liberal values and essentially anti-intellectual safe spaces which were hostile to conservative thought.19 In the aftermath, Murray appeared on an episode of Sam Harris’s podcast titled Forbidden Knowledge, where they discuss his research on race and IQ and the protests at Middlebury.20 Harris faced extensive criticism from the left-wing media outlet Vox for giving a large platform to Murray, which they contended allowed him to spread pseudoscientific ideas about race and IQ – specifically that black and Hispanic people in the US are genetically predisposed to having lower IQ scores than whites and Asians.21,22 Harris then entered into an email exchange and debate with Vox journalist Ezra Klein who, validly, criticised Harris for not having an in depth knowledge of intelligence research, and also accused him of engaging in a kind of ‘anti-woke’ identity politics in relation to his collusion with Murray during their interview.23 In debating Harris, Klein drew on the work of the late intelligence researcher James Flynn, whose work focussed on the environmental causes for racial differences in IQ.24 In my interview with Flynn in regards to his book In Defence of Free Speech: The University as a Censor25 he says that Murray is ‘a serious scholar... That doesn’t mean that I agree with him!.’ In regards to the protests at Middlebury, Flynn differentiates between right opinion and right knowledge. ‘All those students at Middlebury proved was that they were more powerful than Charles Murray,’ Flynn told me, ‘none of them could have argued with him.’ Flynn wondered how the far left would feel, upon forfeiting the right to free speech, when the pendulum on censorship eventually swung the other way? In regards to Harris and Klein’s debate, Harris rejected Ezra’s assertion that he is influenced by identity politics of any kind, stating that he would come to the defence of Murray in the same way that he would come to the defence of his friend Ayaan Hirsi Ali, when she comes under attack from left-wing idealogues.23 ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali rose to prominence after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US. Hirsi Ali had started working as a researcher for a think tank for the Dutch Labour Party, and the attacks served as the catalyst for her public criticisms and disavowal of her old faith. Two years later, Hirsi Ali was elected to the Dutch parliament for the centre-right party The People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy.26 Then, on November 2, 2004 Hirsi Ali’s friend and collaborator, the film maker Theo von Gogh was assassinated by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan Islamist. Von Gogh had directed a film called Submission: Part 1, written by Hirsi Ali, which provided a strong critique of the treatment of women in Islam. Hirsi Ali had been living under armed guard since 2002, and was embroiled in a series of scandals relating to the government costs for her protection and her application for asylum. In 2006 she resigned from parliament, after the Dutch government tried to revoke her citizenship, and moved to the US where she established the AHA Foundation – a not-for-profit that fights for the rights of women and girls.26,27 Hirsi Ali has faced cancellation multiple times. In 2014 Brandeis University cancelled its plans to give her an honorary degree due to her criticisms of Islam,28 and in 2017 she cancelled a speaking tour of Australia and New Zealand with Think Inc. due to security concerns and ‘a succession of organizational lapses’ by the event organiser.29 She has been listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a well-respected entity known for its advocacy against discrimination and its classification of hate groups, as an anti-Muslim extremist.30,31 In an interview for Iconoclast I discussed with Ayaan her book Prey: Immigration, Islam and the Erosion of Women’s Rights.32 We discuss the central thesis of the book, that a wave of immigration from Islamic countries has led to an increase in sexual violence towards women in Europe, and a winding back of women’s rights. We also discussed her criticisms of woke feminism, her advocacy for reformation within Islam and her thoughts on a problematic verse in the Koran; the Surah An Nisa: 4:34, which seems to advocate the use of domestic violence to discipline disobedient wives. ~ University of Toronto psychology professor and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson was first catapulted into the stratosphere of the cultural zeitgeist in October 2016, due to film of him interacting with student protestors and arguing with them about his refusal to use new gender pronouns, which subsequently went viral.33 Peterson then went on to be interviewed by Cathy Newman from Channel 4 News, to discuss his book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote for Chaos, where, in a fiery exchange, they discuss the patriarchy, the gender pay gap, campus protests and transgender rights. Newman’s antagonistic interviewing style, where she appeared determined to misrepresent her guests views, and Peterson’s ‘gotcha’ moment where he defends the right to free speech (leaving Newman briefly speechless), increased Peterson’s fame enormously and made him seemingly the voice speaking up against woke feminism and what he termed the ‘Postmodern neo-Marxism’ of left-wing idealogues.’34,35 Peterson and Gad Saad, a Lebanese-born Canadian Professor of Marketing at the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University, appeared before the Canadian Senate in 2017, to debate the introduction of Bill C-16, a piece of legislation which sought to include gender identity and expression within federal human rights protections.36,37 Peterson argued that the concept of gender identity and expression were too broad and that the legislation to make people use gender-neutral pronouns would constitute compelled speech that would elevate the failure to use a preferred pronoun to ‘hate speech.’38 Saad argued that the concept of gender fluidity meant that a person’s gender identity could change daily, and quoted from a flyer produced by Harvard’s Office of BGLTQ which stated ‘Fixed binaries and biological essentialism constitute transphobic misinformation that is tantamount to systemic violence.’36 The Transgender Rights Bill (Bill C-16) was passed and officially became law on June 19, 2017.39 In a wide-ranging conversation for Iconoclast, I discuss with Gad his book The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas are Killing Common Sense.40 We discuss his work within the field of evolutionary psychology and his commitment to free speech absolutism, as well his adherence to deontological principles. We also discuss how adherence to these principles became a point of contention which caused the rift with Sam Harris, who in Gad’s view, with his support of Trump’s removal from Twitter, violated the principle of free speech in the pursuit of political expediency.41,42 ~ The Grievance Studies Affair (or Sokal Squared) was an academic hoax orchestrated by the philosopher Peter Boghossian, James A. Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose – to illustrate the corruption and bias occurring within ‘grievance studies’ fields in universities. Conducted over 2017 to 2018 the project involved submitting 20 hoax papers to academic journals in race, queer, cultural, gender, sexuality and fat studies fields to see if they would pass through peer review and be accepted for publication.43–45 By the time the trio had come forward to reveal their hoax in October 2018, due to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal46 which revealed that the author on one of the papers, Helen Wilson, didn’t exist, 4 papers had been published and another 3 had been accepted for publication, whilst 6 had been rejected and 7 were under review. The papers argued for ideas such as the existence of rape culture in urban dog parks,47 how males penetrating themselves anally with sex toys can lead to a reduction in transphobia, and included a feminist paper which was really just an excerpt from Mein Kampf rewritten with feminist language.44,48,49 The trio stated that they were trying to raise awareness that certain academic disciplines had been compromised by their underlying philosophies of postmodernism and critical theory, and that these areas of study were producing some dangerous and morally corrupt ideas that did not tether with reality.44 In their book Cynical Theories Pluckrose and Lindsay state that woke activism is driven by an ideology now taught within universities that they call ‘applied postmodernism.’50 In Iconoclast, I am in conversation with Peter Boghossian, where we discuss some of the philosophical underpinnings of postmodernism, why speech isn’t violence and the problem with the idea of cultural appropriation. According to Boghossian the far left’s current focus on controlling language within institutions, based on ideas from poststructuralism, is intended to manufacture different outcomes. He says that terms such as ‘anti-racism’ and ‘diversity, inclusion and equity’ simply don’t mean what most people think they mean – they have been changed to architect new outcomes. ~ On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46 year old black man, was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a 44 year old white man who was a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis police department. Chauvin, after apprehending Floyd on the suspicion of possessing a counterfeit $20 bill, had knelt on his neck for over 9 minutes, while Floyd was lying face down and handcuffed in the street - in spite of Floyd’s repeated protests that he couldn’t breathe.51–54 The incident had been filmed by bystanders and caught on security cameras and the following day the footage was made public, resulting in all four officers involved in his death being fired.55 Minneapolis Major Jacob Frey upon seeing the footage of Floyd’s death released a public statement saying that: ‘Being black in America should not be a death sentence.’56 The murder of George Floyd was the catalyst for worldwide protests against police racism and brutality, with protesters calling for greater accountability for police.57,58 In 2016, Heather Mac Donald, the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute,59 gave a talk at Hilldale College in regards to her book The War On Cops.60 In this speech she stated that black on black crime was a far greater threat to black Americans than police violence. She stated that: ‘There is no government agency more dedicated to the proposition that black lives matter than the police,’ and that ‘We have been talking obsessively about alleged police racism over the last 20 years in order to not talk about a far larger problem: black on black crime.’61,62 Then, in April 2017, Mac Donald was invited to give a speech at the Athenaeum at Claremont McKenna College, which resulted in 250 protestors blocking the entrance to the building and disrupting the event with chants of ‘Black Lives Matter.’63 Campus officials, fearing for the safety of students, faculty, staff and guests instead decided to live stream the event.62,64 In her essay for Iconoclast Mac Donald once again explores these themes in relation to the politics of BLM, and the hyper focus on the small number of police killings of unarmed black men. This seems to come about due to a confluence of factors: protestor and political advocacy, institutional support, the media focus which causes an availability heuristic about the prevalence of these killings,65 and a general social unwillingness to confront difficult truths about the crime rate in some black communities. Additionally, writer and commentator Coleman Hughes, who originally stated he was in support of BLM, discusses part of the reason he walked away from the movement in a reprint here of his City Journal article Stories and Data.66 Hughes, whilst acknowledging that police departments have issues with corruption and a lack of accountability, stated that he discovered that the central narrative of BLM is false; that racist cops are killing unarmed black people - from stories and data. He recounts the story of Tony Timpa, a white man who was killed by Dallas police officers in 2016, in almost identical circumstances to George Floyd. Although criminal charges were initially brought against the police officers involved in the Timpa killing, they were later dropped.67 Hughes ends the article by opining that if we can’t lift the national public discourse above where it currently is, we may see repeats of the George Floyd riots occurring regularly in the future.66 ~ In early June 2021, Bret Weinstein began making claims about the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin, stating it was a highly effective prophylaxis and treatment for COVID19. On his DarkHorse Podcast he hosted Dr Pierre Kory (M.D) from the Front Line COVID19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCA),69 in an episode titled COVID, Ivermectin, and the Crime of the Century, where Weinstein and his guest stated that ivermectin was ‘99% effective’ in treating COVID19, and that if the drug were distributed widely it would ‘end the pandemic in a month.’70 Weinstein and Kory then appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast where they argued that pharmaceutical companies were supressing the data on the effectiveness of ivermectin as they wanted to bring new designer drugs onto the market rather than using relatively cheap, repurposed drugs to treat COVID19.71 In the weeks following the episode of Rogan’s podcast there was a massive increase in demand for ivermectin as a COVID19 treatment, with the CDC reporting that 88,000 prescriptions were written in a single week in mid-august compared to 15,000 in the week prior to the podcast.72,73 This was in spite of a trial by Edward Mills of McMasters University conducted in Brazil, that was larger than all other ivermectin trials put together, showing that ivermectin’s benefits in treating COVID were too small to detect.72,74 Weinstein also interviewed Steve Kirsch and Dr Robert Malone, who was touted as being the inventor of mRNA vaccine technology, in an episode of The DarkHorse Podcast titled How to Save the World in Three Easy Steps.75 In this episode Weinstein’s guests made a series of claims about the safety of the vaccines, including that the spike protein produced by the vaccines was cytotoxic and that the transmembrane domain, which is supposed to anchor the spike protein to a localised site, fails, and the spike protein is then distributed throughout the body and accumulates in the ovaries, bone marrow etc.75 The podcast was then taken down by Youtube, who were enforcing their COVID-19 medical misinformation policy.76 The podcast was also subject to a rebuttal published in Quillette authored by Claire Berlinski and Yuri Deigin, who sought to address misinformation about the effectiveness of ivermectin and the safety of the vaccines.77 There was a response to the article from Weinstein and Heying on their podcast78 and a war of words between Quillette editor Claire Lehmann and Weinstein on Twitter.79–82 Sam Harris, a friend of Weinstein, interviewed Eric Topol, who is a professor of molecular medicine at The Scripps Research Institute, on an episode of his podcast titled A Contagion of Bad Ideas, where Topol characterised Weinstein’s position on mRNA vaccines as ‘Totally irresponsible. It’s reckless. It’s sick. It casts unnecessary doubt... It’s taking people who want to believe in a conspiracy, or who don’t know what to believe, and making vaccines look like they are intended to harm. With no evidence whatsoever.’83 Youtube demonetized Weinstein and Heying’s channel due to their claims about ivermectin, and they subsequently moved their broadcasts to Odysee; an alternative video sharing platform.84 In a conversation conducted on October 14, 2021 for Iconoclast, I spoke with Eric Topol and we discussed the research on ivermectin, the Delta variant, and the claims made on the episode of The DarkHorse Podcast featuring Dr Robert Malone. In regards to ivermectin we discussed issues in relation to power and experimental design, as well as the fraudulent studies that had to be excluded from the meta-analysis. Topol also restated his belief that the views expressed on The DarkHorse Podcast constitute wilful disinformation about ivermectin and COVID19 vaccines and have, to some extent, led to the increase vaccine hesitancy currently occurring in the US. ~ This book contains some of the most important ideas that have shaped the current culture wars. It is not, however, a story about left versus right, or ‘anti-woke’ versus ‘woke.’ It is a book about the cultural transmission of ideas, and how we converse with one another. Eric Weinstein coined the term Intellectuals of the Dark Web (IDW)85 to describe an informal group of ideologically and politically disparate thinkers that now include Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, Bret Weinstein, Ben Shapiro, Douglas Murray and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who have come together and found common ground in their opposition to identity politics and cancel culture. They have also come together to thresh it out in the realm of ideas. However, with Sam Harris handing in his ‘imaginary membership to this imaginary organization’86 due to some members extending ‘the principle of charity’ to Trump in regards to his claims of voter fraud, the IDW seems to have disintegrated.87 So, are our political and ideological differences too incommensurate to allow us to cross the divide, and has COVID19 shown us that some ideas are too dangerous to discuss? We live in the age of social media, the advent of which has led to the mass democratization of opinion, which makes it increasingly difficult for many to discern truth from error.88 On social media, people seem divided; civility is low, and everything is hyperpartisan. The old gatekeepers; the traditional media, with their inherent flaws and biases, are receding into the distance and are almost gone – trust in institutions is low. The voice of one may now be broadcast and influence countless others, regardless of the veracity of the claims. We are in a double bind: any moderation can be viewed as cancellation; of censorship and suppression of fr