Michael Gerson notes Ms. Sykes’ asperity regarding Rush Limbaugh and others of the politique adroit:
The first response to the performer on a public stage wishing the death of a stranger for political reasons was discomfort. Wanda Sykes had “crossed a line” at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in accusing Rush Limbaugh of terrorism and treason, mocking his past drug addiction and wishing his kidneys would fail. But a counterreaction soon developed: Humor often is transgressive, and if you can’t take it, don’t dish it, and let’s everyone lighten up a bit, and can’t anyone take a joke anymore?
The initial reaction was more human…
…civility has an unavoidably moral component. The proper treatment of others conveys regard and demonstrates self-control. Rudeness sets out to dominate and humiliate. This is not only true in politics. “Precisely because rudeness is quite common,” says philosophy professor Emrys Westacott, “it is not a trivial issue. Indeed, in our day-to-day lives it is possibly responsible for more pain than any other moral failing.” Verbal violence can leave people smarting for days, or scarred for years, or pushed like a vulnerable middle-schooler toward suicide. Such hostility is broadly and correctly condemned. Why does politics seem to numb this rudimentary moral sense?
The answer, of course, is the infectious nature of incivility itself. Every excess provides the excuse for greater and opposite excess — a search for more vicious put-downs and more startling obscenities. Avoiding this escalation is one of the primary challenges of the schoolyard and one of the important attributes of a citizen. Everyone has grievances; fewer have the courage of manners. All of us need more of it.
Indeed. We’re caught in a bind – people have staked out positions and the more stupid the position staked out, the less likely a person is to surrender it. While there are some on the right who have fallen in to this trap, most are on the left…thus for each conservative who calls the Code Pink ladies traitors, there are a score of leftists who will call mild disapproval of gay marriage as proof of “homophobia”. The reason why con artists do well is that they work on the fact that people will do just about anything to avoid being noticed as a fool. Its the underpinning of the Big Lie – the Big Embarrassment. Admission of error is, next to forgiving, the hardest thing a human being can do. And if one is desperate to avoid exposure as an idiot, then just pushing on further becomes a natural thing…rather than admit to being an idiot on, say, the issue of Affirmative Action, leftists are now pushing for the even greater idiocy of reparations. On and on it goes.
How to stop it? I don’t think we’ll be able to any time soon. Too much of the elite in our society are caught in the fool’s bind. If you think its hard for a screeching demonstrator on the street to admit to error, imagine how hard it is for people with Ivy League degrees to do so. I expect, actually, a higher and higher level of incivility as time goes on until the political left is utterly crushed.
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