I, for one, have never been scared to have an opinion.

But I am finding that the more established and further along in my career I become, the less inclined I am to have an opinion publicly.

What’s different about me now than before? I think that now I am actually more fragile to the potential destructiveness of being caught in public with the wrong opinion, whatever it may be. Put bluntly, I have more to lose now than I did before.

The consequences of which I speak are obvious to anyone who has paid attention to the viciousness of the news cycle in recent years especially with regard to reputation-destroying personal attacks.

I find this state of affairs sad and it all but guarantees the only opinions you hear in public from well-regarded people will come from professional opiners: politicians, journalists, pundits, and provocateurs. And it means that the people whose true, unguarded, potentially insightful opinions we could really benefit from, from successful CEOs and entrepreneurs to professors and writers to athletes and entertainers, are silenced.

I wouldn’t mistake grown adults acting like children yelling at each other over Twitter for civil discourse. We’re missing actual, real discussion where smart people with respect for each other’s motives hash out the solution to life’s thorniest problems in a productive public forum.

Instead we have no Oscar host.

Your move, America.