But Garry, why not both?

I concur, however. Like others, on this thread, I (slowly) eliminated nearly all news from my life over the last two years. Doing this has had a profound effect on my perspectives, but has also ruined a lot of "conversation" for me. Previously, I played along in various forms of political shittalkery, but now, I find it disturbing to hear/see.

Increasingly, I am concerned by the tone, content, and purpose of many (American) people's strongly-held positions. On occasion I have found that voicing a contrary opinion results in estrangement, but more worryingly, merely not voicing a validation is enough to achieve some alienation.

We have moved from free speech to compelled speech. If you fail to perform the necessary virtue signaling then your loyalty to the tribe is questioned.

That's a great quote, but I would characterize what's happening now as 'Narrative Propaganda' in that, there is no authoritative source dictating the terms, but a gaggle of groups fixing the language, narrative, establishing the 'Overton Window' of what is acceptable to talk about - and anyone who has reasonable arguments against said narrative is just suppressed.