“Civility” Means Being Nice to Old White People Who Deserve to Be Yelled At
Of course they want everyone to be polite. Because they’re back on their bullshit—they never left.
Groomers, pedophiles, pornographers.
Snowflakes, Tumblrinas.
Klanned Karenhood, Assholes with Casseroles.
The Minivan Taliban, Mary KayKayKay.
Betty Crackers, Wine Kampf.
Civility seems so reasonable. Who could quarrel with being polite, with listening to the views of others, with a calm and considerate conversation about the topics of the day? Quite a few of us, it turns out.
Earlier this year, the Westport Library decided to wade into these churning waters, announcing—with great fanfare—the launch of a rescue boat. The portentously capitalized Common Ground Initiative is meant to be “Westport’s new forum for public discourse on issues of importance to the community.”
“The aim of the initiative,” according to the press release for its first event, “is to host a positive, productive conversation on how we work together to move forward as a civil society, to encourage respectful, constructive dialogue, and to build capacity to tackle challenging and controversial issues.” (The backstory—a tangled tale involving a commemorative tile wall now warehoused a few towns over, the Westport Library, the Westport Museum for History & Culture, a local blogger, charges of libel, threats of a lawsuit, and more—is for another day.)
The first event, on May 2, featured one white man (library director Bill Harmer) introducing a second white man (attorney and moderator Steve Parrish), who himself interviewed a third white man (former U.S. senator Roy Blunt). This conversation took place in the Christian J. Trefz Forum, named after a white man who has donated to Donald Trump ($750), Devin Nunes ($250), Kevin McCarthy ($1,000), Steve Scalise ($1,000), and Mitch McConnell ($1,000), among others. One thing we can all agree on: That’s a lot of white guys.
Some of them meant well, and to be fair, they said they had also booked a former Democratic senator (a white woman, they hinted) who’d withdrawn at the last minute. But if you were watching the conversation, you heard about Blunt’s political friendships and his life in politics. Fine. But there was little takeaway for the mere citizens in the audience, who—eager for answers, eager to engage—laboriously filled out index cards with questions that were first vetted by committee members but in the end were almost completely ignored. (Not letting audience members interact directly with speakers combines civility and censorship—very effective.)
Dumb it down, rev it up, stir the pot, and serve it steaming.
To “reach across the aisle” and “work together to achieve a common goal” meant “finding things you agreed on,” it seemed. Blunt encouraged elected officials to see what they could do and not dwell on who they were. That may work for reasonable politicians. But who on the left and in the center can stomach the flavors of the right: Q-Anon, MAGA, and the go-along, get-along Republicans who stay silent and complicit because they need every single vote in their slim-margin districts? (Who can tell who’s who anymore? Why even try?) And who on the right is willing to consider the needs of women and their OB-GYNs, epidemiologists, union members, the LGBTQ community, people who want to have a bottle of water while they wait in line to vote? How does civility take root in soil like this?
Civility tends to operate in civilizations, where people stipulate to a series of truths, laws, facts, and principles. Knowledge is good. Science makes sense. Cruelty and ignorance are generally frowned upon. But when people can’t adhere to these basic premises of civilization, they forfeit the right to ask for civility.
“Be civil” just another way of saying “Calm down, pardner.” Civility is, in the end, a way to shut people up, a way to discourage the angry from expressing their anger—about a government that stifles their right to vote, their right to love, their right to control their bodies. It’s also a smokescreen that lets companies avoid taking a side, another tool in the toolbox of the privileged.
“Stop asking prominent white men how they feel about civility,” suggested Substack star Hoarse Whisperer in a widely circulated post from 2018. “White men aren’t the ones being locked up in cages, abused by bigots, or shot by police. Stop climbing to the very top of the privilege totem to ask the unaffected how the affected should behave.”
Uncivil comments aren’t exactly new. The rules of reality TV made their way into politics long ago: Rudeness generates controversy. Controversy generates media coverage. Dumb it down, rev it up, stir the pot, and serve it steaming. It’s what makes the world go around. And some factions are good at it—until they get backed into a corner by facts and reality. That’s when the right’s Civility Siren sounds. They’ve taken off their white gloves, sure, but they want you to keep yours on
.