On civility

[Lothar]

I’ve spent the last year on the road talking to many thousands of people across this country. They are hungry for some integrity, some honesty, and some real solutions to the problems that ail us. They’ve had enough of partisan bickering and nasty wisecracks and the denigration of other people.
Our most basic principle as a country is “we, the people.” A government that is truly “of, by, and for the people” must be based on a fundamental respect for each other. Every time the “governing class”—from members of Congress on down to the police officer walking a neighborhood beat— chooses not to exercise civility and respect for one another or for the people they represent, it is a blow to we, the people. Unfortunately, we, the people. are taking blow after blow, day after day, in the climate in which we live, and at a perilously high cost to the integrity of our democracy.
Just as we must not allow political correctness to keep us from speaking truth, we must not use political correctness as an excuse to use mean and divisive language. The sickness that plagues our government, politics and the media, popular culture, and our own day-to-day interactions with each other is rooted in this incivility and disrespect. We can’t turn this country in the direction it needs to go until we begin to heal this sickness.
The events of this week have provided a tremendous learning opportunity, both for the candidates running for president and for the American people who will elect this president. Today—right now—we can choose to change the tenor of this national conversation. By purposefully interacting with one another with civility and respect, we will improve all of our prospects for the future, no matter who ends up in the White House. This might be the single most important thing we accomplish together, to the benefit of we, the people, far beyond Election Day.

via

[Admin note: this is not a discussion of the person who made the comments, it's a discussion of the comments themselves. This will be strictly enforced.]

[Lothar]

related, I liked this article (from an entrepreneur) about the pitfalls of presuming competitors/opponents are stupid: http://www.aaronkharris.com/presumption-of-stupitidy

Going with it is the philosophical principle of charity: http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html

and Chesterton's Fence:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.

[woodchip]

Could this be why Trump is resonating so well? Seems people are quick to demean him and then get all flustered and teary eyed when he fires back. Perhaps if there was more civility, Trump would be nicer to them.

[Tunnelcat]

Could this be why Trump is resonating so well? Seems people are quick to demean him and then get all flustered and teary eyed when he fires back. Perhaps if there was more civility, Trump would be nicer to them.

Why was the question from Megyn Kelly uncivil? All she asked him was why he called women he didn't like repulsive names, which I'm not bothering to repeat, and his retort "off camera" while on the phone (coward), was to accuse her of being on the rag, no matter how many ways he parses it or blames other people's mis-interpretations of his "language". What does it tell you that I'm defending a Fox News personality, the bain of liberals everywhere? The man's a class A jerk. Trump's the one doing the name calling for no other reason than to inflame people and make himself the poor little victim so that people will come to his side. Most of his comments about people incude some sort of name calling or personality trashing. He's nothing but an alpha bully with no substance, no class, a big mouth and the ego to match.

As for Carson, all one has to do is search the net to figure out he's got his own "civility" issues. He stands on his doctor's pulpit and looks down his nose at those he thinks are inferior, intellictually and morally. He's associated himself with a pastor who think's gays should be put to death. He's called Obamacare the worst thing since slavery, which shows me he's been living comfortably wealthy in his hallowed castle far too long and well removed from the past to remember the indignaties of his own race to even compare Obamacare to slavery. I already posted links about Carson earlier in this thread, but the post mysteriously vanished not long after I posted it.

[Lothar]

I already posted links about Carson earlier in this thread, but the post mysteriously vanished not long after I posted it.

Not so mysterious. Reread the first post. I explicitly want this thread NOT to be about the guy who made the comments, but to be about the content of the comments.

I mean, it's OK if you want to say "here's a politician who I think fails at civility in these ways" in the context of a broader discussion about how different politicians fail. But if the focus becomes the one politician at the expense of a broader discussion, I'll be aggressive on the delete key.

[callmeslick]

I heard, and have heard, Carson's words on the matter. Words SOUND good, but in practice, he has engaged in exactly what he decries. Therein lies the rub for all in politics. Easy to SAY 'we should restore civility', or other platitudes, far harder to practice, or especially demonstrate leadership on the subject in the real world environment(which includes human nature, political realities of the present and a 24-hour news machine).


oh, and the stuff on reform is insightful and wise. Once again, in the real world, easier said than done, but worth keeping those principles in mind at all times.

[Tunnelcat]

I already posted links about Carson earlier in this thread, but the post mysteriously vanished not long after I posted it.

Not so mysterious. Reread the first post. I explicitly want this thread NOT to be about the guy who made the comments, but to be about the content of the comments.

I mean, it's OK if you want to say "here's a politician who I think fails at civility in these ways" in the context of a broader discussion about how different politicians fail. But if the focus becomes the one politician at the expense of a broader discussion, I'll be aggressive on the delete key.

Any person who wants to promote civility in politics cannot disconnect himself from any of his own past or present incivility in said politics. If that person wants to rise above the fray and climb out of the mud and practice civility, they need to practice what they preach. I dislike hypocrites who want to look clean on the outside, but still stink of mud underneath.

Sure, the discourse in politics needs to become more civil. Not gonna happen. Politics, past and present is nothing more than personal attacks and uncouth behavior in an effort to ruin the other guy just to win. It's become a national pastime every election because our politics have devolved into an aggressive and competitive spectator sport. All the sports-minded males here should know that. Being uncivil is no different that yelling obscenities at a competing team in a sport arena. Uncivil behavior is not a new thing in American politics either. We haven't all suddenly become a bunch of uncivil idiots in politics, although with the election of Obama and rise of the Tea Party, it's gotten a lot worse since. Trump, and others before and after him, have come from the long heritage and practice of political mudslingers. It's been around so long it's become an institution. Only in cooperative societies, of which ours is definitely NOT, is incivility considered rude and improper.

http://lasvegassun.com/news/2009/aug/30 ... -politics/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wi ... in-america

[Lothar]

I dislike hypocrites

I find the charge of hypocrisy to be both one of the weakest and least useful responses.

If you agree with the ideal but don't like that the person has failed to live up to it, then instead of complaining about hypocrisy, why not encourage people to live up to the ideal even though somebody else has failed? And if you disagree with the ideal, instead of complaining about hypocrisy, why not complain that the ideal itself is flawed? In either case, there is less to be gained by talking about the person than by talking about the ideal.

Have "we the people" had enough with the climate in which we live, where name-calling and disrespect are the norm? Should we choose to "change the tenor of the national conversation"? Or should we give up, deciding that since there has always been some degree of meanness, that we'll tolerate endless escalation, and even cheer on our side when they get the better of it?

[Sergeant Thorne]

I don't think the tenor of the "national conversation" will change unless it is shamed into changing. What's being suggested here is not so much a higher ground, IMO, but a totally different plain where the rules which must cause we the people to lose may be rejected and the larger scope and opportunity of reality recognized. But while we're talking about recognizing reality, we may realize there are matters of power play conveniently aloof from this ideal which may preclude the idyllic end-result hinted at. I believe that, if the conversation changed, it would actually force these power plays out into the open and we would be immediately at violent conflict with well armed interests which otherwise subtly beset us.

In other words when you unmask a devil you haven't won as some idealists may suppose--you've provoked and engaged.

[Tunnelcat]

I dislike hypocrites

I find the charge of hypocrisy to be both one of the weakest and least useful responses.

If you agree with the ideal but don't like that the person has failed to live up to it, then instead of complaining about hypocrisy, why not encourage people to live up to the ideal even though somebody else has failed? And if you disagree with the ideal, instead of complaining about hypocrisy, why not complain that the ideal itself is flawed? In either case, there is less to be gained by talking about the person than by talking about the ideal.

Have "we the people" had enough with the climate in which we live, where name-calling and disrespect are the norm? Should we choose to "change the tenor of the national conversation"? Or should we give up, deciding that since there has always been some degree of meanness, that we'll tolerate endless escalation, and even cheer on our side when they get the better of it?

What can I say, politics in this country has been devolving into a really nasty sports competition for the last couple of decades. Not that Americans have never been adverse to competitive mudslinging, it just seems that despite the polls saying most people are tired of the vitriol in politics, it keeps rearing it's ugly head like a typical Jerry Springer TV episode. Being a woman, I find most of the current incivility distasteful and rude, because I'm not really the competitive type and it takes a good dose of aggression to be really competitive. And doing something to win usually throws a person's morals out the window, because we humans like to win at all costs. It's a part of evolution. Of course, sometimes I get carried away myself here, not that I'm proud of it either, so I won't stand on the moral high road and proclaim innocence.

What I find interesting is even though the majority of Americans dislike negative campaign ads, the candidates still run them all the time, especially as the election date nears. Why the temptation? It all comes down to people's memory retention. Loud and obnoxious ads stick in people's brains long enough to sell a candidate's position and get that all important vote. Nice and polite usually is forgotten. People are more likely to remember those types of ads and thus give a vote for the guy who ran it when they get to the polls, which was the intended purpose of the negative ad, when most people have short attention spans, harried lives and too much information overload to deal with.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/04/advertising.aspx

Which brings me back to Carson's call for civility. He's not a pioneer in the complaint either. Why, when a whopping 95% of Americans believe civility to be important for a healthy democracy, as the poll in the link below found, do both candidates and voters invariably end up slinging mud and shouting names at each other come campaign time? What's the allure of fighting dirty when most people find it repulsive and rude? We keep on doing it despite ourselves. Is it because our society in not a cooperative society? We're basically split 50/50 in this country between liberal and conservative, with a large smattering of independents in between. We're definitely not going to be cooperative between the 2 main political factions since we don't agree much on each others positions, are likely to be vocal about it and are unwilling to give a little ground to compromise. I can also guarantee you that some people here will vehemently disagree with these survey results and be uncivil about it too. Such is human nature.

http://sites.allegheny.edu/civility/

A whopping 95 percent of Americans believe civility in politics is important for a healthy democracy.

87 percent suggest it is possible for people to disagree about politics respectfully.

Nearly 50 percent of Americans believe there has been a decline in the tone of politics since Barack Obama became President; 39 percent say it has remained the same; and 10 percent suggest there has been an improvement.

Citizens paying close attention to politics are four times as likely to say the tone of politics has gotten worse than those who pay only modest attention to the news.

Radio listeners are much more likely to perceive a decline in civility than are newspaper readers.

Blame for the decline in civility is spread widely, but political parties and the media are seen as the worst culprits.

Liberals are twice as likely to promote compromise solutions, than are conservatives.

Americans want compromise on a range of policy issues. For example, some two-thirds of Americans support a compromise on immigration reform.

Several findings suggest GOP candidates may do well in the 2010 midterm elections, but many independent voters appear up-for-grabs.

An overwhelming number of conservatives who intend to vote in the 2010 primary elections expect their elected officials to stand firm, rather than compromise on tough policy questions.

Women define civility differently than men, and are more likely to label recent public political behaviors as uncivil.

40 percent of Americans believe the least civil politicians should suffer a “trip to the woodshed,” 32 percent said they should take a manners class with Emily Post, and 16 percent said they should retake kindergarten.

[snoopy]

Just as we must not allow political correctness to keep us from speaking truth, we must not use political correctness as an excuse to use mean and divisive language. The sickness that plagues our government, politics and the media, popular culture, and our own day-to-day interactions with each other is rooted in this incivility and disrespect. We can’t turn this country in the direction it needs to go until we begin to heal this sickness.

I'd like to connect this, ultimately, to our "sound bite" society. Here's what I mean: I think we've been trained to look at almost everything very simplistically - because the media keeps the messages to little, simple snippets (which hold our attention better). So, I think that we have been trained to look at a piece of information, find one thing to latch on to, and move on. Since we're essentially "skimming" all the time, we use our predispositions to reach a conclusion before we even really start... if something comes from an entity with whom we generally disagree, we look for the first thing that we can find to disagree with and we essentially stop there. Likewise, if it comes from somewhere with whom we expect to agree we look for something to latch onto and run with it. If we really slowed down and attempted to appreciate the complexities of the subjects and materials, I think we'd often find that the world isn't nearly as black and white as we thought it was, especially in the political arena. So, I don't think the answer is just "let's all be nice to each other." I think it needs to go deeper - I think that a real cure would necessitate that people truly engage the other person's perspective, understand the logic behind their position, and appreciate how they drew their conclusions. The irony of it is that it seems like it's the sound-bite, skimming mentality (which is to a large part a disengagement of thought and reasoning) that's the quickest to assume stupidity of mental disengagement of the other side.

This makes me think of Everlast's "What it's like."

[Tunnelcat]

I was watching the morning news and the movie reviewer talked about a newly released movie that upon hindsight and discussion with my husband, provides some of the genesis for our modern political incivility in the media. It was released on July 31 of this year and is called: "The Best of Enemies".

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/movie ... sport.html

The movie producers dug up as many old clips as they could find of the struggling ABC network's new political talk show, with Buckley and Vidal hotly debating politics during the 1968 presidential election and they worked at creating a new documentary movie about the whole episode. Most of those clips hadn't been seen since they originally aired, especially the final show with all the fireworks.

Now, my husband was bored in the summer of 1968 and watched these two literary political opposites go at it like cage fighters on TV, and remembers it quite well. As the Democratic Convention went into full swing and Mayor Daley and his thugs got swinging in the streets, the discourse between these two aristocratic intellectuals quickly devolved into the same bloodsport that was going on in the streets of Chicago, and the first live on air epithets ever uttered on TV flew. It was quickly censored on the West coast in the taped delay it was so scandalous. No one screamed such language on TV back then. ABC's ratings soared. People craved for more. Thus began a new politial era in the new media age.