I’ve been a consistent critic of the MO, yet I find myself agreeing with almost everything SarahLevine says. I wish she didn’t feel like she had to become apologetic at the end there.
Most of the American Litvish world has either lived in NYC at some point, or been influenced by its culture of aggressiveness. Bochrim can have a heated debate over a gemara in yeshiva and then go back to business as usual afterwards, but people don’t act that way towards each other in the working world; they just don’t. I think they tend to calm down and become normal after they’ve been working for a year or two. I assume Sarah is referring to the actions of people currently in yeshiva.
What she is saying about education also makes sense, but I will say YU took it to an extreme. Too many people talk about these trends to call it a coincidence: the Yeshiva system drifted farther into the anti-secular education direction, and the YU’ish world drifted into the anti-Orthodox/anti-halachah direction. People shouldn’t have to chose between sending their kid to a school that will endanger their frumkeit and sending them to schools that will give them terrible educations.
By the way, people don’t tend to say it publicly on the CR, but I will: the standard shittah in the non-MO world is that you’re better off sending your kid to a kosher, goyish University than to YU. YU has a track record of peer-pressuring people into being less frum.