It is becoming almost impossible to debate on this site, as everything is a proxy for something else. Thought is always perceived as advancing a specific Team or Tribe’s goals, and to many the idea of heterodoxy or idiosyncrasy is unfathomable.
Public intellectuals serve the public when they think out loud and try to apply principles consistently and look at events in a specific and contingent sense. If you're rolling out talking points based on the positions of your clique or your opponents, you're doing a bad job.
It will surprise some of the millennial Twitterati to learn that some people really do *actually believe* the ideas they articulate, even if it puts them in uncomfortable positions or isn't good fodder for The Algorithm.
