Sarah Jeong, unsurprisingly, get’s this week’s internet controversy completely right in Letterheads: Social media and the end of discourse.

For all its pretense to logic and debate above all else, the old paradigm bred an irrational and incomprehensibly unjust society. The opinionators frequently circulated debunked or faulty science, and they kept alive a “debate” around climate change that has not existed among scientists for decades. They tolerated the intolerant and treated dehumanization as a difference of opinion. They were — despite being held as the paragons of rational discourse — never particularly rational. One only needs to point to the war in Iraq as proof of that.

Author’s Note: The title of this post is taken from Jeong’s piece as well.