…premonition casts a darker shadow over the op-ed pages where a wilful suspension of dissent prevailed for long, as if to speak up was to commit blasphemy, to give oneself to the internet lynch mob, to isolate oneself as a heretic worthy of being burned at the digital stake; and where the fear of being frowned upon by the one whose name shall not be mentioned ran between the lines;
…dissenting savants have regained their words, shed the last raiment of fear, and written the last phrase that an irredeemable regime deserves, a regime, as the newly liberated pundits tell us, that has outlived the vote—and, more significantly, their initial endorsement;
…the political obituary, the eleventh-hour dissenters’ last act of bravado, shows an aversion to the normal, defines change in…
