The American Civility War

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 16 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

The most important issue before the American people right now isn't Afghanistan. It's not the deficit. It's not health care.

It's civility. (This is the logo of the Civility Center, a non-profit run by Dr. Jay Newman of Michigan.)

Political and technology trends have combined over the last 40 years to make us a very uncivil people. The Nixon Thesis' adoption of McCarthyism, of thinly disguised racism, and later of religious intolerance resulted in the Bush Excess, a time during which Republicans decided they could make up their own reality.

That Excess is still alive in the Tea Party, whose signs, abuse of public figures and threats of violence are all direct attacks on the American experiment. History will prove that their incivility makes them traitors. It will bury them as it did the hippies before them.

I first saw this trend, online, in 1988, when I entered some Usenet discussions concerning politics through the old GEnie service. The level of vitriol, of insult, and sheer incivility I experienced there stayed with me.

It's easy to insult someone online. It's easy to call them names when you don't know them, when they're not standing in front of you. It's easy to ignore any moves toward compromise, or apology. It's easy to dehumanize.

It is in dehumanizing others that we dehumanize ourselves. The Web makes it easy. Some artists, reading that sentence, are already, right now, getting ready to flame me again, because I made a mistake with a piece of art and they have no intention of accepting any apology, explanation, or suggestion aimed at prevention.

I can't do anything about that except pity them.

Ever since the Web was spun, this easy dehumanization has been rising, spreading into other media, and seeping into our souls. Even the souls of our young people. Unlike a piece of art, the lives of victims like Alexis Pilkington can't be brought back. Cyberbullying easily turns into the real thing, as the case of Phoebe Prince demonstrates. 

The same thing holds true in our political life, and in this case civility truly is a partisan issue. Republican leaders and media celebrities have chosen to ignore, deflect or reject every instance of threatened — and actual — right-wing violence over the last year.

Blood is on their hands.

It's true that under the First Amendment you can say what you want. But you still must take responsibility. In my own case, I'm going to lose about one-third of my income because I stole a bit of art work and then tried to defend it in the face of cyberattacks from what I considered a lynch mob. I happen to think, in retrospect, that the result is fair, and had the punishment been more public that, too, would have been fair.

But the cyberbullies stirred up (with malice aforethought) by artist Chris Buzelli also need to look within their own hearts. There is no case law showing that use of a thumbnail in a blog post, with credit, is theft. Their cries were lies. I gradually came to understand the nature of their rage, but rage must not be our default position as American citizens.

(Picture from a course page at the University of Maryland.)

The whole American experiment is aimed at maintaining civil discourse, without which democracy becomes impossible. We must learn to disagree without becoming disagreeable, and without losing sight of the other side's humanity, no matter our differences, or we're not really Americans. We're just pretending we are.

I'm not asking for perfection here. And I'm certainly not claiming to be without sin myself. But what we used to call netiquette is routinely ignored online, and that hurts efforts to find common ground on any issue.

The chief claim of the Tea Party is that the Constitution means what they claim it means. This has never been the case. The Constitution is a legal document, subject to judicial interpretation, and judges are supposed to be chosen for their diligence — they're not legislators. Screaming about secession, or organizing militias against legitimate government authority — that's crazy talk. It's un-American.

All this is enabled in the media by a false equivalence that makes the reporting of Rachel Maddow into the same thing as the psychotic ramblings of Glenn Beck, when seen from CNN. Uh, no. Maddow doesn't make shit up. Maddow doesn't preach sedition or call herself a "rodeo clown."

At the heart of the cyclical nature of American politics is the idea that, in time, any set of myths, values and assumptions will step into a trap of their own making. This is the Nixon Thesis' trap, one Republicans have stepped into with both feet. Angry rhetoric spurs incivility, incivility spurs dehumanization, and dehumanization inevitably leads to violence.

As the economy recovers — and it is recovering — those conservatives who now have blood on their hands will find it does not wash off. Democrats must not let them off the hook. We are the Silent Majority now, and our cry must be that you speak civilly, speak respectfully, or you won't deserve a hearing. You demanded we salute George W. Bush — you salute Barack Hussein Obama.

Anyone who would resort to violence in defiance of this rule is a murderer and traitor.