And in this case, the discourse has been anything but polite.
The dumbing-down of discourse has been particularly striking since the 1970s.
Once the idea of rational discourse has been undermined, spectacle is all that remains.
Still, the damage inflicted on civil discourse has been graver than most people care to admit.
Instead, our national discourse has been hijacked by those seeking to deflect attention from militant Islamic extremism.
Meanwhile, our policy discourse has been dominated for years by what turns out to be a false alarm.
The discourse has been co-opted by the True Believers, on one hand, and Angry Atheists on the other.
As Upendra Baxi has argued, "the power of human rights discourse has been critically appropriated by global capital".
The post-leftist appropriation of this discourse has been in the development of a "transnational progressivism" or antinational cosmopolitanism.
"In our neighbouring country, the political discourse has been poisoned," wrote Sebastian Fischer in a comment piece for Spiegel Online.
Much public discourse has been focused on women's underrepresentation in STEM fields — natural science, technology, engineering and math, said Leslie.
