“Public language today resembles an exchange of greeting cards more than a discussion. It makes me think of the punch-out Valentine’s cards I and all my elementary school classmates used to distribute. […] Everyone had to get a valentine, even the bullies who had beaten me up in fourth grade for supporting Kennedy over Nixon. And anyone who actually read the cards and took their sugary wishes for a real statement of my feelings misunderstood the whole exercise. Today’s public life is a series of greeting-card debates. What counts is that the responses sound like responses. Their effectiveness is the same even if they turn out to be meaningless.” - story