Take back civility

Life’s a bitch. Don’t vote for one.

She’s a cunt. Vote for Trump.

Better to grab a pussy than be one.

Don’t be a pussy. Vote for Trump.

I wish Hillary had married OJ.

Where did all this foul, despicable, inexcusably vile rhetoric come from? How did we devolve to such base, crude, violent, sexist sloganing? Putting aside, for just a moment, ideology and political passions, forgetting (ha) gender and class and race, why should any of us engage in such degraded, loathsome speech?

Some of us would like to think these slogans (all seen on t-shirts and placards at Trump rallies) are “just” the product of the angry fringe, snarlings emerging from deep within the basket of deplorables. But you know what? Incivility has become a part of everyday American life –not just tolerated but accepted, normalized, embraced. Lashing out with name-calling, turning disagreement into rudeness, crudeness and bullying…Mr. Trump did not invent this.

I blame us – all of us – for the debasement of dialog, for our inability to argue a point without an “oh yeah, well you suck” comeback, for the failure of imagination and intelligence (not to mention garden-variety decency) that leads us to criticize a person by invoking a body part or by suggesting murder.

Anyone who’s ever scrolled through the comments section of a news site has seen (for years now) this deplorable behavior, this resorting to insult instead of engaging in debate, this crude name-calling. One study that analyzed more than 6,400 reader comments posted to the website of the Arizona Daily Star, the major daily newspaper in Tucson, found that more than 1 in 5 comments included some form of incivility, with name-calling as the most prevalent type.

More than 4 years ago — back when Mr. Trump was merely a billionaire developer reality TV host and not a candidate for the highest office in the most powerful country on the planet – Psychology Today ran a long story about the rise of incivility in American culture, pointing to – that’s right — reality TV.

We became inured to it long before Mr. Trump stirred the pot. We watched (and laughed at) the crude idiocy of Beavis and Butthead. We tuned in to bullying chefs and insulting, hot-headed talk show hosts and back-stabbing/ trash-talking “Housewives of…” It was entertainment. Just as we at first thought Mr. Trump was entertainment.

We were wrong.

And now, as we watch Mr. Trump lose, we need to pull ourselves out of the mire. We need to take responsibility and reclaim civility in American life.

We are capable of intelligent conversation. We are capable of passionate, informed and respectful debate and disagreement. And if you don’t think I’m right, then fuck off.