Democrats, among whom I now count myself after years as an independent, agree on civil rights but not on civility. Hillary Clinton recently said this to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour: “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about.”
But many Democrats agree with Bloomberg’s Noah Feldman (“Take the High Road: Civility Still the Best Policy for Democrats,” Oct. 13) that civility is still our best policy.
The essential reason: When civility breaks down, violence is likely to erupt.
My last real fight was in 1950. Three of us, all sixth-graders, were involved. I can’t remember the cause of our angry name-calling, but the fight is memorable.
It began when Robert, to my surprise and maybe his, beat up Gary pretty decisively after school. Robert then reminded me that I’d ended our shouting match during recess with a promise to fight him. It was, he pointed out, getting close to suppertime.
I took off my jacket and said we should leave the blacktop where he and Gary had fought and move to the patch of grass that somehow survived the postwar paving of our schoolyard. This shift of venue discouraged several observers who had circled the preliminary bout, and by the time we began to roll around on the grass, the circle was smaller. My own confidence had plunged considerably after I agreed to the fight, so I remember being comforted by the diminished crowd size.
As it turned out, I was quicker than Robert, whose fast-twitch muscle fibers probably took a beating in his prolonged encounter with Gary. But before I could press my advantage, a teacher stepped in. Apparently concluding two fights in one day were one too many, she broke us up and sent the small crowd on its way.
Even then, I knew our fight was foolish, and my conviction that temper tantrums are dysfunctional has grown over the intervening 68 years. Recently I’ve hesitated to use the anger emoji on Facebook.
But the dysfunction is not immediately obvious when you consider the political career of our president.
In a recent New York Times article about the hypocrisy of Donald Trump’s calls for more civility from Democrats, “Trump’s Contradiction: Assailing ‘Left-Wing Mob’ as Crowd Chants ‘Lock Her Up,’ ” Peter Baker provides a lexicon of name-calling words he uses to describe those who oppose him: evil people, angry left-wing mob, totally unhinged, mentally deranged, wacko, crazy and psycho. This language, common in his tweets and rallies, is part of his political appeal, especially when joined with language like this from a rally where Trump encouraged members of the audience to remove a protester with this self-contradiction: “Try not to hurt him. If you do, I’ll defend you in court.”
Baker mentions angry Democrats who have chased Republicans out of restaurants, possible presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker’s suggestion that activists “get up in the face of some congresspeople,” and former Vice President Joe Biden’s claim that, if he’d been in high school with Trump, he would have “beat the hell” out of him for disrespecting women.
So Hillary Clinton’s view that incivility is now a necessary response to Republicans probably won’t produce the kind of criticism she got for describing half of Trump’s supporters as “deplorables.” But historians might someday conclude it was an idea more poisonous to our democracy.
For one thing, it normalizes petulant, polarizing behavior. Those who criticized Brett Kavanaugh’s raging performance in his last appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee tended to focus on his lack of a “judicial temperament,” as though his tantrum would have been just fine if he’d been a candidate for, say, the U.S. Senate.
And when our leaders rely on language that expresses their contempt for the opposition, they teach our children to disrespect each other. Although my wife and I no longer work in classrooms, we hear of teachers encountering much more conflict than we remember — kids battling each other, sometimes even their teachers, in class.
The incivility of our leaders influences adults too. My brother John recently returned to living aboard a boat in the Swinomish Channel in La Conner, Wash., after several years away.
He’s delighted to be back on the water, but he’s noticed a worrisome change in the waterfront culture.
A few years ago, John used to hear friends complain quietly about the special fishing regulations governing Swinomish tribal members who have long depended on fishing for salmon and harvesting shellfish. His friends also sometimes complained among themselves about tribal members whose fishing boats made wakes that bounced people in “live-aboard” boats.
Now locals gather on docks to shout and blow horns at Swinomish boats as they pass. And tribal members have taken to speeding up to make bigger wakes.
John has talked with some of the men who are shouting, telling them their loud demonstrations only make matters worse. They tell him all the white people in town agree with them.
It’s a disheartening local version of a national crisis that includes widening racial divides.
Just as our president’s insistence that reporters are “enemies of the people” who write “fake news” has appeared to legitimize an open season on journalists all over the world, this kind of incivility seems likely to spread and produce more violence.
One of several things we should have remembered after hearing Christine Blasey Ford’s thoughtful testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee is this: Carefully chosen, honest language that assumes mutual respect is likely to have enduring influence.
Bill Nichols lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at Nichols@Denison.edu.