“…one thing that we have become acutely and very personally aware of is that there seems to be a movement in modern society to avoid information, theories or opinions which trigger cognitive dissonance and the associated psychological pain.  Often associated with terms such as “cancel culture”, “virtue signaling” and “woke-ism”, this movement appears to have manifested as a belief system which holds that the individuals as well as the collective body politic have a fundamental right to intellectual protection, to not encounter unpleasant thoughts, information or ideas which are inconsistent with their internal model of reality. These are the intellectual roots which nurture censorship, denialism, and the weaponized gaslighting, defamation and slander, as well as the idea that anything which causes individuals to lose faith in their government constitutes domestic terrorism and should be treated as such.  There is a long and rich human history of punishment by death for such dissident thoughtcrimes. I suggest that these behaviors and actions are among the ugliest manifestations of the tribal human tendency to reject those who are willing to speak inconvenient truths, and that this tendency has always been a dark reactionary aspect of the processes by which scientific and medical knowledge advance.”

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