All else having failed, maybe we should try civility

Laura Dockery
Aug 22, 2017 · 4 min read

Winston Churchill wisely noted that, “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing — after they’ve tried everything else.” He may have been talking about a different time, but his words seem prescient today.

I’m hoping he was right. Having exhausted every possible form of discourse in the last few decades and gotten nowhere on virtually every issue of significance, we might finally resort to civility. Look, I’m no prude. I am not overly offended by the fact that you can hardly find a word or joke too rude, crude or socially unacceptable to use onstage or in polite conversation. I’m just weary of it. “Fuck” has no more shock value than “make love.” In fact, it conjures up far less and is not a particularly hilarious punch line. Whatever happened to creative cussing? Like “You son of a motherless goat!” Or, “Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.”* Those got you thinking.

The thing is, I can’t help but yearn — just a little bit — for the days when you took stock of your audience and doled out your opinions judiciously. Don’t get me wrong, I like a little verbal sparring. I’m happy to engage in it with people who are equally willing. But broadcasting your rants on Facebook and getting 4,000 likes from people you’ve never met is hardly engagement. Establishing common ground with one person outside of your usual network, on the other hand, can be life-changing.

I recently saw this TED Talk from poet/activist @Theo EJ Wilson : https://youtu.be/FdHJw0veVNY He describes why he, a progressive black man, infiltrated the alt right online and gained a measure of empathy for some of their feelings. No, he didn’t find a new way of thinking or change his politics. He found a new way of communicating. He listened. And when he did, he heard some familiar grievances from white men that mirrored his own experience as a black man. It surprised him. The lesson he took from this was to get out of his own echo chamber and start interacting with people who don’t simply reflect his own world view back to him.

I will admit that I did the reverse after the 2016 presidential election. I define myself as socially progressive and fiscally conservative, though my fiscal conservatism doesn’t lean toward unfettered capitalism. It’s more about not spending what you don’t have. I’m married to a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. Needless to say, we don’t agree on a lot of things, except that we are both good people with legitimate viewpoints. But this last election cycle — whew! It was truly difficult to share the same space at times. The rhetoric — on all sides — was so heated, angry and vitriolic! We both got caught up in it.

So when Trump won I needed to be with my own peeps. I found a group of humanists having a post-election meeting on learning to talk with the other side. (No need to explain which side the humanists were on.) When the woman introducing the program described the subject of the meeting, a man in front, clearly a long-time member of the organization, asked/announced, “What if you don’t want to talk to them?”

If ever there was a moment that called for raging civility, this seemed it. But I was new to the group, and didn’t want to get into a rumble — yet. I stifled the urge to stand up and ask, “Then why the hell did you come here today?” Instead I watched and listened, and when we broke into small groups I fascinated the other five members of mine with my tale of living with a conservative. They were truly curious. Most could not imagine how we manage.

Not easily, I can tell you that. Our self-righteous public discourse today seems to permeate every personal relationship. We test the waters with new people to see where they stand, and then decide whether or not we will continue to befriend them. There are good people on all sides, folks! We are all complex, conflicted, imperfect beings, and it is just plain boring to only hear your own opinions bounce back at you.

But we have to tone down the rhetoric. And I’m not just talking about politics, though that sphere has gotten particularly craven. Every Trump voter is not a brain-dead, misogynistic racist. And every Hillary voter is not an elitist race-baiter. You didn’t have to like Trump or Hillary to vote for either of them. Most of us compromised, pretty severely, when we voted in that election. But that’s the reality of life. And it is what we need our public officials to do now — engage and compromise! It is pretty clear that we are going to have to show them the way. Our current “leaders” are much more likely to follow — polls, lobbyists, big contributors, etc. They certainly explain why a good portion of the country wanted change, ANY change, when they voted for Trump.

So let’s do this. Let’s start raging about civility!

*Movie lines from Steve Martin in The Three Amigos and John Cleese in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Raging Civility

A place for civil discourse, with a pinch of rage

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Laura Dockery

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Raging Civility

A place for civil discourse, with a pinch of rage

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