Decades ago, Michael Jordan was not interested in ideology when selling shoes, declining an expected political endorsement by saying “Republicans buy shoes, too.”
This was just pragmatic mercantilism, not laudatory upholding of civilization that tolerates public discussion of diverse ideas.
The situation today is that popular voices offering alternatives to mainstream storytelling are subject to cancellation campaigns. Mainstream experts are unable to make accurate predictions and news is increasingly scatterbrained propaganda telling ideologically twisted stories separated from historical context, as if events occurred randomly without a great deal of cultivation.
The public increasingly tunes out of dull narratives and babbling explanations too lazy to make sense. Uncurated conversations are preferable to robotic news readers who aren’t going to give you facts that would make advertisers upset.
This makes media companies furious. How dare people ignore official news and prefer listening to different ideas and viewpoints! By rejecting the power of narratives, those pushing narratives are losing the ability to control events.
Media companies will initially respond by going private and selling direct access to their consumers . This will reduce the opportunity for competitors to crush them with censorship — in many cases making more money from this model. With one more option taken away, the remaining public unwilling to pay for quality will have to continue consuming narrative propaganda and advertisements.
As the cold civil war intensifies, personal information collected by internet companies will be purchased to semi-accurately assess whether a person supports or rejects leftist narratives. They can also determine how fervently a person supports leftist narratives, so those who are not loud enough supporters could be discriminated against for not helping advance the progressive revolution.
Internet data collection could then be used to cancel non-leftists, denying them banking, travel, communication, and any other privileges woke private companies might want to deny them. Most individuals will be identified by stores and privately profiled to determine whether or not they are permitted to conduct business.
But the stage that follows turns sharply against leftists. At first, an underground economy for non-leftists emerges using cryptographic banking, new travel companies, and alternative means of communication.
The end consumer is well profiled, allowing farmers to establish end-to-end electronically enforced smart contracts with distributors stipulating that stores cannot sell their food to leftist customers. This allows only non-leftists to purchase natural food, while leftists have to subside on soy, bugs, and processed foods, dooming them to unhealth.
Truckers could also refuse to handle commerce unless leftists were excluded from purchasing it.
Divorce is expensive because it is worth it, and a national divorce will be costly too, though offers a chance to get past contentious discord escalating from intolerance for alternatives to leftist doctrine.
Most non-leftists just want to be left alone, so stronger fences might be needed to keep peaceful separation from totalitarian neighbors who are so privileged they can’t tolerate that others might have different in opinions and goals.