Comment by zo1

It's easy because you picked an "easy" starting point that B et al are reasonably justified in wanting to "punish". Replace "hates people whose name starts with R" with "thinks illegal immigrants are breaking the law and need to be deported" as an example.

Now you get into a can of worms because it's a reasonable and rationally-defendable point of view that we're dealing with that probably has a 50-50 split in terms of public support. It's an opinion that needs to be discussed rationally without the conversation and people's lives devolving into ugliness.

Right now, people are censoring themselves for fear of repercussions that are very real because we've allowed a very vocal minority (on both sides?) to dominate and force consequences without a demonstrable majority in public-support. As long as there is an "aura" of majority-agreement on a touchy topic, dissent becomes dangerous. And it's self-reinforcing because you don't see any dissenting opinions on it so everyone thinks there is majority-support and dissents even less, causing a landslide.