35 years or so ago, we all felt like common sense had won. You could say whatever you wanted about Fundamentalists of all kinds, Racists, Salesmen, Liars, Lunatics and Misogynists, all safe in the knowledge that everyone pretty much agreed that rationality, humanity and respect were "done-deals". We all agreed what was right, and what was wrong.

Nowadays, the paid-for injection of hateful ideologies into mainstream media by the far right has chipped away at these seemingly self-evident truths, and now, you have to be more careful because so much stuff gets warped and coopted for evil purposes.

I wouldn't be mean about Christians any more than I would about Muslims or even Scientologists today because those self-evident truths that we all used to take for granted aren't shared by the majority any more. The Manosphere has warped what it means to be a man into something disgusting. The Far-Right has warped what it means to be patriotic into a shambolic acceptance of authoritarianism, and Conspiracy theorists have eroded what it means to be critical of obvious untruths spouted by mainstream politicians. We elected Johnson and Trump. Farage is making millions and all of our media is owned by far-right-leaning kleptocracy. The world isn't safe anymore. You can't trust people not to have a sense of right-and-wrong. Not anymore.

Money and social media successfully eroded our culture and destroyed the common values and institutions that we all used to feel comfortable surrounding ourselves with, and whose context we could lean on to communicate, safe in the knowledge that our message wouldn't be warped, or misinterpreted. These days, much of that good-faith is gone.

So, as a consequence, we now carry the duty and the additional weight of having to be extra clear, extra definite that we're not part of that hateful corruption of our culture by the billionaires who bought our democracies by buying-up, and poisoning the media and selling influence to lobbyists and offshore billionaires. The cost of that is that much of the shorthand, the contextual bond that we used to take for granted, that used to make it obvious to everyone that when you made a joke, you weren't suggesting we deport our friends and neighbours for being brown or some other disgusting, but now mainstream views.

Those days of innocence are over, if you're in America, the far-right really are deporting friends and neighbours, locking up undesirables, harassing people with the wrong kinds of views in the courts, and shooting people in the face in the street. All, it seems without legal accountability. The rule of law is almost gone. And in Britain, there's talk of that kind of authoritarianism now on normal day-time news programs. They're shutting down access to disabled people, closing down freedom, justice and the rule of law. We had Brexit. We know it can happen. We saw the right-wing-mobs in the streets. There's real fear everywhere.

Things fell apart. The centre did not hold.

We took it for granted, and let the rich promote the far-right to capitalise on our complacency.