by Lynn Mandaville
I was very upset this past week to see the unfortunate, rude behavior of some liberals/Democrats toward Homeland Security Secretary Kristen Nielsen and Press Secretary Sarah Sanders.
Both women and their dining companions were openly confronted in public spaces simply because of their political views. Nielsen was vocally harassed at a private dinner. Sanders and her family were ejected from a restaurant without finishing their meals.
I was upset, but not really surprised, by this oppositional pushback. For a very long time now, poor behavior has been the strategy of choice by Republicans, or Evangelicals, or white supremacists. Liberals and Democrats until recently have been surprisingly quiet in the face of the name-calling and negative aspersions.
Now the bad behavior is being committed, very simply, by boors and brats in both camps. And it really has to stop.
If one were to remember back to those oh, so innocent days of our youth, when “America was Great,” and we were in junior high school, one might remember how a schoolyard argument could quickly and easily degenerate into one of those intelligent exchanges like “I know you are, but what am I?” You call me a name (jerk!), and I call you one back (butt hole!), and with each exchange the names get meaner and uglier, and the behavior worse and worse.
This is exactly what is happening now.
The administration has taken a stand on immigration with the separation of children from parents, to which a majority of Americans take issue. And because some people feel they have put up with lies and unfair actions by the administration for too long, they are inappropriately overreacting out of their long-held frustration.
As much as I detested listening to the lies and excuses made by Kristen Nielsen at her press conference, it didn’t occur to me that it would be OK to interrupt her (ironically Mexican) dinner with colleagues. My disagreement with or loathing of her does not give me, or anyone else, the right to harass her. My right to free speech belongs away from her personal life.
As tired as I am of hearing Sarah Sanders parrot the lies and various ugly-isms of her boss, she ought to be allowed to have a quiet dinner with family at the restaurant of her choice. Just like a baker should not be allowed to discriminate against a potential customer of his bakery on religious/political grounds, the owner of the Red Hen should not have discriminated against Sanders and her party because of perceived prejudice against the LGBTQ community.
(In my opinion the owner missed an important educational opportunity with her staff to instruct them in taking the higher ground.)
People on both sides of the congressional aisle bemoan the loss of civility in today’s public discourse. Then they engage in belittling each other, and aping the president’s habit of name-calling. They engage in tit-for-tat legislative gamesmanship. And then everyone is shocked when some moron throws human excrement on the restaurant from which Sanders was expelled.
Will the escalation stop short of fist fights or gun play? We have to do more than just hope so.
Once again we have a simple issue of basic interpersonal etiquette.
When adult human beings have a disagreement, common decency requires that participants set aside emotional entanglements so that they can stick to the actual topic in dispute. Psychologists dealing with couples’ counseling call this fighting fair. Name-calling and the insertion of red herrings into the argument are not allowed.
If congress among its members, or the media with the press secretary, or the administration toward the American public were to follow these rules, we might be able to re-establish civility in discourse.
But as long as we engage with each other by way of schoolyard verbiage, half-truths, and outright lies, as a nation we will deepen our divisions rather than bridge the divide.
We human beings are better than all this base behavior.
“What a piece of work is man,” Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel, In apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world, The paragon of animals.”
I haven’t witnessed infinite faculty lately. I haven’t seen angelic actions or godlike apprehension, much less any paragons of animals. From Washington I see hardness and cruelty, answered by the American public with rudeness and poop.
I can just imagine Emily Post spinning in her grave.
Lynn, I think the following was from a very recent New York Times article about civility.
“The film about Fred Rogers, the beloved figure of American childhood, has made $4.9 million at the box office since it opened on June 8—more than 20 times the typical haul for a documentary. In interviews, director Morgan Neville paints the documentary’s success as indicative of our times. “We’re in this period in our culture where I feel like nobody wants to be an adult anymore,” Neville recently told Deadline. “A character like Fred takes us back to how we should treat each other.”
To paraphrase Simon and Garfunkel,
“Where have you gone Mister Rogers
Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you “
Let’s face it, we have evolved
Into a uncivilized society plain and simple. Let’ s swear at each other, threaten each other and murder each other. Don’t even forget road and other forms of aggression that we participate each day. Living in the U.S.A. Ah……..