cheap-shot flags

Over the decades we've seen many useful concepts "emerge". Recent examples include the now-established concepts of ecosystem (in mid-20th century schools), black hole (by John Wheeler in 1967), post-traumatic-stress-disorder (in 1980), proper-time (in 21st century intro-physics discussions of relativistic motion), autism-spectrum-disorder (in 2013), etc. The shift of emphasis to alternative concepts, of course, often encounters enthusiastic resistance.

Time may decide what works in the long run. In the short run, however, the resistance sometimes resorts to lower-level attacks e.g. with less emphasis on data and more on cartoonifying the: culture, community, family, friends, and personhood of proponents. Can you think of any examples of this?

Holding accountable those who resort to unbalanced narratives is something we don't seem to be very good at. Is there a way to protect free speech while being more sophisticated in recognizing un-hinged shouts of "fire" in a crowded theatre?

A shout of "fire" for any reason tries to shift the dialog (and our attention-focus) to the ''paleolithic'' level in which "lives are threatened" and we must act to "preserve what's inside our skins". Is it possible that appeals to "character assassination", when someone's policies are at issue, is doing something along the same lines?

When we get the chance, how about flagging such broadcasts objectively in advance e.g. as warnings of a threat to the "numerically-smallest that applies" of this list: (1) self, (2) friends, (3) family, (4) community, (5) belief-system or (6) knowledge? Folks will still have to decide if they want to empathize with the narrative (e.g. to exit the theatre in the case of a level 1 warning), but at least they would be reminded that an appeal to something paleolithic (especially for levels 1 through 4) ''in them'' was afoot.