> On the right, this manifested itself as various forms of xenophobia and a wholesale mistrust of institutional figures; on the left, as much of what came to be

> On the right, this manifested itself as various forms of xenophobia and a wholesale mistrust of institutional figures; on the left, as much of what came to be called cancel culture and its censorious milieu. Both were attempts to police the boundaries of us—to identify, in other words, those within our circle of trust and those outside of it. The author is describing a widely discussed trend, and using everything but the correct names for the two groups: wing-nuts and woke-nuts. Two sides of the same coin. The inter-networked hand-computer era has all but killed attempts at autonomous thought, and even the idea that pushing oneself toward intellectual autonomy is a good thing to do...