Civility and the Pointed Finger

To demand that I meet the architects of savagery with civility is to insist that I negotiate with an adversary in a language that he does not speak. It forces my acquiescence and yields me nothing else, while at the same time yielding him a moral high ground he has previously unoccupied.

Speaking to your opposition in a language that he will understand is not the same as adopting his ethics or rationale. It is instead a statement intended to have little room for misinterpretation by the party to whom it is directed. Because if there is any language in which the current GOP is fluent, it’s the language of restriction. Of denial. Of oppression. Of ostracism.

The accusation levied against such shunning is that it is evidence of liberal hypocrisy, because it proves intolerance on the part of a group that claims tolerance as a necessary trait. The GOP may very well be considered free from such an accusation because the GOP has never claimed to be tolerant.

But what those who level this accusation fail to understand — and what, sadly, many of those accused don’t seem to realize, either — is that such alleged  incivilities are a personal declaration that a line of demarcation has been crossed.  That a social code, an ethos — which by definition draws boundaries between behaviors that are acceptable and those that are not — has been violated.

Though you may be held to account by this declaration, you have no obligation to rationalize it to anyone. A moral decision, a declaration of unwillingness to aid, abet, or silently condone unacceptable behavior, needs no rationalizing.  It’s an announcement that you are confident about which side of a moral and ethical line you are standing on — and that you will not be timid about pointing to those who cross it and calling out as wrong, as unjust, harmful as to the precepts of your society.

For some time now the GOP has understood  this in its very DNA. It feels no obligation whatsoever to explain itself, and it understands the tactical advantage of demanding that their opposition is obliged to.

Incivility to the architects of savagery. Own it.