I agree. I see those as symptoms (assuming there's anything there at all). The important question is whether there's something driving them to that state.
> The important question is whether there's something driving them to that state.
No. There are millions (probably even tens of millions) of people who share circumstances with these racist/homophobic/misogynistic asshats and who never fall into these behaviours. You cannot excuse any of the *isms with economic anxiety or similar nonsense.
It might be that we miss some key insight into Ebola or virology by trying as hard as possible to contain and eradicate it. Still, we restrict ourselves to studying it in a lab, rather than treating an outbreak as the place to find a possible nugget of truth.
It's one of the most frustrating parts of discussions about this topic for me: we're constantly supposed to weigh the value of hypothetical goods and somehow judge our commitment to freedom of expression by how far we're willing to go in defense of possible outcomes we can't even clearly articulate.
