| It seems like there are four things being conflated (for simplicity's sake, no malice) here: - Actual day-to-day acquaintances' responses to someone's perceived ideological heresies (read: your friends having a problem with your views) - Individual and bandwagon responses to someone's perceived ideological heresies (read: "the internet" having a problem with someone's opinions) - Corporate responses to someone's perceived ideological heresies (read: Google banning accounts or firing an employee) - Government responses to someone's perceived ideological heresies (read: the executive branch punitively cutting unrelated funding or the DOJ starting frivolous lawsuits) Ordered thusly because I think people (regardless of their orientations) have increasing issue with those things the farther down the list you go. And especially #3 (corporate) and #4 (government) seem to have gotten out of control after 2016, somewhat as a response to worsening disingenuous behavior by #2 (the internet). It's one thing if friends decide to not be friends because of expressed views. It's worse getting mobbed by 100+ strangers from the internet. And it should probably be unacceptable that there are corporate or government consequences for some of the low-grade "Well that's just your like your opinion, man" stuff in the last decade. |