For certain topics, there are factors that absolutely have to be included in any serious conversation and often good enough for a rough mental model. You can flip this around to form a test for seriousness: the writer who leaves the necessary out of big think pieces is not serious and is probably best ignored.
When discussing the Press coverage of Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris, misogyny may not be a sufficient explanation, but it is definitely necessary.
When discussing Western wildfires, more than a century of a disastrous war-on-fire policy that left our forests basically a huge collection of tinder bundles is both necessary and sufficientish (though a more complete discussion should include climate change as well).
When discussing the increased frequency of droughts, heat waves and hurricanes, on the other hand, climate change is both necessary and sufficientish.
When discussing the rise of MAGA and QAnon, decades of Conservative Movement propaganda and disinformation is necessary and sufficientish.
Obviously, these are complex issues with multiple complex causal relationships behind them, but any theory that claims to explain one of them and yet leaves out the primary cause, is profoundly and irredeemably silly, and we have way too much silliness in our discourse already.
Always start with whatever is doing the heavy lifting.
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