The house passed the health overhaul. Amid shouts of “faggot”, “nigger”, “baby killer” and others. The tea baggers unleashed a zealous repetitive assault, the technique learned from the McCarthy era, its latest iteration on Fox news. Bret whats-his-name showed it clearly (another post). Lack of civility. The whole Republican party? If not, where are the loud voices from the Right protesting the over-the-top behavior? I don’t see much of it. Folks, for better or worse we are (or maybe it should read “should be”) in this together. Bush passed the tax cuts. The Democrats objected but got on with it. So now Obama has passed Health Reform. Will the Republicans just get on with it? Not bloody likely. See, they play by a different set of rules. They scream and insult while the Democrats talk softly and try to be civil. I really hope civility wins, but I am not sure it will. You historians out there: Does this look like the end of any other civilized governments?
I think the issue is increasing transparency in government, not declining civility in government. There are more cameras and microphones trained on our government, so more of the trash talk gets captured and broadcast; but our government has always been pretty uncivil.
ReplyDeleteTo wit: both LBJ and Nixon were pretty potty-mouthed, and encouraged the same verbal venom from staffers and opponents; ditto Truman; ditto Coolidge, Harding, Taft, TRoosevelt... and that's just the last 100 years.
Congress has always been filled with rancid dialog (the House more than the Senate, LBJ notwithstanding) -- pull up some of the subcommittee transcripts from the civil rights era for ripe reading; ditto the McCarthy era; ditto the lead-up to WW2; ditto the New Deal.
And Harry Blackmun's post-retirement interviews with biographers point to some pretty vicious politicking in both the Warren and Burger USSC's. We're talking bickering, threats, backstabbing, racism, sexism... ugly stuff.
None of which made the papers or TV at the time, because first, the papers and TV weren't invited to the conversation back then, and second, media culture then was such that no one would print or play that kind of trash talking on air. These days, we have a CSPAN camera at every meeting, no matter the subject or size; we have microphones stuffed in front of every elected stuffed shirt; and we have partisan attack dogs instead of the press who are ready, willing, and able to take any comment -- in context or out -- and blare it from here to the moon.
It's not the government that's getting less civil, it's us. We've come to expect it, and excuse it, and tolerate it. The folks who shouted that trash during the health care debate? They're rolling in donations. *There's* a civics lesson for you.
Thanks Matt. All points noted and well taken.
ReplyDelete