There is a tone, a method, a habit of reframing disagreement as moral or psychological failure that is not new. It has been used before. It has been used effectively. And it has left lasting harm in its wake.

Language that indulges in dehumanization is never incidental. When discourse shifts from argument to spectacle, when disagreement is treated as pathology and persistence as defect, the goal is no longer understanding or accountability. It is social erasure.

Personal denigration, when used by those who claim the capacity to defend their positions on other grounds, should not be forgotten. It should be remembered as evidence of a failure to persuade without harm.

Some of us remember exactly how and why villages and their children burn. And we are done pretending it was ever about warmth.

TD


Penned by my hand on the 18th of Ero, in the year 994 AF.