I think tech culture is tone deaf to the point of criminality

KB, I'd say you don't know the half of it, but you consume enough media that I imagine you probably do. You'll have to forgive, this has been stewing for a couple of days and was exacerbated last night when my group of friends were harassed in a restaurant by a group of guys, two of whom were making MAGA hats. In Canada. Unironically (not that that is the sort of thing one should do ironically).

I will point out that anyone whom I have ever personally heard utter the phrases "open debate", or "marketplace of ideas" has consciously or subconsciously believed that they have nothing to lose in that situation. It makes for an easy position to hold, when you believe that the "none too dangerous" things you debate can't hurt you.

It's a lot harder of a sell when people are debating your existence, or debating whether you should be allowed to exist, or debating whether or not you're a person, or debating what bathroom you should be "allowed" to use.

Honestly, the LGBT community figured out that reasoned debate was going to get them exactly nowhere sometime around the beginning of the postwar period, at the very least by the time the Compton's Cafeteria Riots took place. Any time "reasoned debate" has gotten the community anywhere, it has been a public face that was veneered overtop of rioting, civil disobedience, or die-ins. I am not a person of colour, but I imagine black people who lived through the civil rights era would tell you much the same. Indeed, I have heard them say it, but it is not my story to tell.

This is not the first time that people more interested in debating ideas than bearing responsibility for their actions have tried to go up against bad people in "free and Honest" debate. Putting a mirror up between the "debate" around LGBT people in the Weimar Republic and the current political situation should give people reason to pause. These people that they want to debate? They're not interested in "free" or "honest". fuck, the vast majority of people in positions of power aren't really interested in "free" or "honest" if it means they lose out. At this point, I'm just trying to figure out if these people are actively malicious or passively malicious, or i guess if it really matters.