The missing dimension in PG's analysis is power, particularly power imbalance.
PG writes that his "aggressively conventional" category are "responsible for a disproportionate amount of the trouble in the world" and "have been handed a tool" via social media with the result that "customs protecting free inquiry have been weakened."
This is bollocks.
Prior to social media, there have been hierarchies- in terms of people organization at workplaces and in the political arena, and in terms of information distribution- that prevented those with power from being subjected to the inquiries from those without.
The notion of "free inquiry" was limited to those topics that were considered to be of interest to those in power, which often explicitly excluded topics around justice and power imbalance.
Populists were those organizers who were able to formulate a message and leverage those powerless voices into a voice that succeeded in demanding answers from power.
Now, social media have created platforms where voices from groups/individuals who otherwise are powerless can amplify their individual voices.
But it also is a platform that enables augmentation of the voices that are speaking from places of power, perhaps even to a greater degree, because power has access to automation and the levers of the amplification algorithm.
In the US we are facing an unprecedented (for the US) physically aggressive and dangerous assertion of federal power, under the leadership of a cognitively diminished, corrupt, and according to some dimensions of national interest, traitorous, sociopath. This leadership is also by any measure failing, to a criminal degree, in its most important role- to act in the interest of those for whom it was elected to serve- in the pandemic.
To complain that "free inquiry"-say, of the sort that Tom Cotton wished to engage in- is being limited- because his OpEd in the NYT led to a backlash and to the OpEd leader resigning- is to completely miss the fundamental power dynamic.
Cotton spoke in service of the same forces that are engaging in state-sanctioned violence, while also failing at leadership. When that happened in other countries, we would call Cotton a propagandist and would see it as the responsibility of journalists to not engage with his arguments, because of the violence that accompanies them.
As AOC heroically pointed out- violent acts are not separate and apart from violent speech. When a party in power engages in violent acts, their violent speech should be considered one and the same.
To say it out loud is banal but necessary- those without power are dying and having their lives destroyed by the forces holding the reins of legal, policing, and military power in the US. For there to be "free inquiry" this assertion of actual violence on the part of the state must stop.
The "aggressively conventional" group that has completely slipped PG's mind in his analysis is the state, which is in literal terms aggressively and violently engaging, both in speech and act. This is fundamentally unacceptable in a nation under rule of law.
Social media is the only vehicle the weak have to organize and amplify, and, yes, while there are a few casualties from an intellectual perspective- the OpEd head at the NYT lost his job- these pale in any moral sense in comparison to the actual casualties at the hands of those in power.
So- PG, some advice: why don't you give away your wealth, get a job as an uber driver or an "essential" food delivery worker, and see what you think about social media and cancel culture then. I'll wait.
More directly- PG has blocked me on twitter, because I dared to criticize some earlier comments he made there. Forgive me for offending, dear leader. I was only intending to engage in free inquiry.