Civility and Community

Civility and Community:

The word “civility” is cognate with “civilization.” And the word “communication” is cognate with “community.” Both civility and communication, I would argue, are essential, if we are to sustain our community and civilization, and thereby avoid endless tribal warfare, in our locality, in our nation, and on our planet as a whole. When civility and communication are undermined by bad faith, sneering, and rancor, it threatens both our community and our civilization. This is one reason why learning how to communicate ideas clearly, with civility, is so important—especially during an unprecedented global crisis.

The words “civility” and “civilization” both derive from the Latin world “civitas,” which means “city.” And cities, as opposed to small towns, are places where people of many different backgrounds—ethnic, social, religious, and ideological—are in constant commerce and interaction with each other. In order to do business, and in order to get along, people in cities had no choice but to learn how to communicate with people unlike themselves in a civil manner.

I have lived long enough now to remember when civility was the norm in our national political discourse. When I was young, there were only three television networks—ABC, NBC, and CBS. These networks were staffed with the top tier of career journalists—people like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Harry Reasoner, Howard K. Smith, , and later, Robert McNeil and Jim Lehrer, with a solid liberal arts education and backgrounds in both radio and newspapers, who had internalized norms of civility throughout their careers, and promoted critical inquiry and thoughtful debate among their guests. They also selflessly served the public interest, holding both Democratic and Republican administrations and elected officials accountable for their actions and words, and their newscasts were followed by everyone in the country.  And so, at that time, widespread public demonstrations like the 1963 March on Washington, or Earth Day 1970, were covered extensively by all three networks. At these times, America was the envy of the world, emulated by everyone else (except, of course, their ideological foes in totalitarian countries like Russia and China).

What happened? There are, of course, multiple causes for the decline of civility into the kind of divisiveness, sneering, blatant lying, malice, paranoia, and rancor that have contaminated our public discourse to the point where people are afraid to even discuss politics unless they know ahead of time that the person they are talking to is “one of us” rather than “one of them.” One could blame the Internet, of course, for creating a situation in which everyone can create their own information bubble, where giant media monopolies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon use algorithms to develop profiles of users and feed them only the news and views (and misinformation) they want to hear.

But this decline in civility and decency, at first gradual, became more precipitous with the rise of Fox News, the malignant brainchild of Australian media mogul and scandalmonger Rupert Murdoch and master Republican propagandist (and convicted sexual predator) Roger Ailes. These two evil geniuses—there is no other word—created a worldwide media empire by abandoning all the norms of decency and civil discourse, and appealing instead to sensationalism, and to the fears, hatreds, and prejudices of the lowest common denominator of their audience. In so doing, they outdid both Hitler and Joseph Goebbels in poisoning the well of public discourse in order to create an unholy alliance between the interests of the corporate elite, on one hand, and the uneducated, embittered, easily manipulated,  lumpenproletariat (i.e. suburban and rural white working class) whose communities were hollowed out and demoralized by globalization, due to multinational corporations exporting manufacturing jobs overseas in search of cheap labor.

Their agenda is to turn the growing rage of this population—not against the corporations that had once provided them secure jobs and a decent lifelihood—but against “the government” who has allowed this, and especially against the “lib’ruls” whom they demonize as “elitists” who pose a direct threat to all that is godly and American. Their logic is simple and deceptive: ethnic minorities and foreigners, supported by “lib’ruls,” are taking away their jobs—while the corporations (that abandoned them) are their friends and will come back as soon as enough corporate tax breaks are given and environmental regulations are lifted.   Through the brazenly partisan 24-7 propaganda of Fox News, led by scurrilous, sneering hatemongers like Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Ann Coulter, these angry, frustrated people are worked up into a lather of resentment and paranoia against anyone who supports taxing the rich or  legislation or regulations in the public interest—rather than against super-rich corporate interests.  Republican operatives call this “energizing the base”—a term whose double meaning should be an obvious indicator of their actual contempt for those they are manipulating.  And oil-funded billionaires like the Koch Brothers planned and subsidized so-called “grassroots movements” like the widespread “Tea Party” protests to defeat an Affordable Care Act that ironically benefitted the protestors themselves.

Yet as late as 2008 and 2012, basic civility between the parties was still evident at the highest levels. I well remember the dignity of John McCain, promptly and firmly suppressing the ugly sneering and catcalls of many of his supporters during his concession speech in 2008, saying of Obama, “He was my political opponent, but now he is my President, and we must all congratulate him.” 

Then came 2016, the rise of Donald Trump, and the end of all semblance of civility in public discourse. In the words of Matthew Arnold, “And we are here as on a darkling plain/Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,/Where ignorant armies clash by night.”