The politics of rage now dominate the national discourse, as the New York Times said in its now landmark article on the decline of civility. And even the Times knew what an outrageous notion they were selling.
“Expecting those of us who are scared and angry over what our country is becoming to speak with civility is absurd — civility died the day Trump took office,” she wrote. “It’s like telling a woman to smile as she’s being sexually harassed on the street: We’re not just supposed to put up with injustice, we’re meant to be cheerful through it, as well.”
The call to civility was published before “L’affaire de Poule Rouge” as Charlie Pierce calls the Huckabee Sanders debacle where a restaurant owner asked the “lying mouthpiece of a lying regime” to leave her establishment. In his column In Esquire, Pierce nailed the hypocrisy of the topic in general and the Washington Post piece on civility which trailed the Times piece by one day:
I’m old enough to remember the raucous town halls of 2010, when the AstroTurfed forces of the Tea Party shouted down members of Congress while men with automatic weapons strolled around the perimeter of arenas in which the President of the United States was speaking. I’m old enough to remember when N. Leroy Gingrich, Definer of Civilization's Rules and Leader (Perhaps) of The Civilizing Forces, was working out his Universal Lexicography of Insult for the benefit of a party that ate it up with an entrenching tool. Newt also emerged on the electric Twitter machine over the weekend, leaping to SarahHuck’s defense, and that was nearly enough to make me give up English as a hobby.
You know who would’ve been baffled by this sudden debate over “civility”? Samuel Adams and John Hancock, that’s who. They were a helluva lot less civil to the crew of the Dartmouth than Stephanie Wilkinson was to the Sanders party, and the citizens of Boston did not comp Thomas Hutchinson to a cheese plate when they ran his sorry ass across the pond.
Pierce is absolutely right. He says, “there are bigger steps to be taken but everyone in official Washington is too damn timid to do what really needs to be done about this band of pirates.” One Democrat who is not the least bit timid to do what needs to be done and to speak her mind is Maxine Waters.
This language has since been touted as tantamount to sedition and inciting a riot. It did prompt this vagueness from Nancy Pelosi, unfortunately:
Now what Chuck Schumer had to say was not only more intelligible, it was the voice of reason. NPR:
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., weighed in Monday afternoon from the Senate floor. Like Pelosi, he did not mention Waters by name. "I strongly disagree with those who advocate harassing folks if they don't agree with you," Schumer said, "No one should call for the harassment of political opponents. That's not right. That's not American."
Schumer criticized Trump as "a man who habitually engages in bullying, name-calling, slander, and nastiness for its own sake" and that he understands the instinct among Democrats who "think we have to fight fire with fire."
However, Schumer said the battle should be waged at the ballot box. "The president's tactics and behavior should never be emulated, it should be repudiated," he said, "The best solution is to win elections, that is a far more productive way to channel the legitimate frustrations with this president's policies than harassing members of his administration."
These reasonable and conciliatory words from Schumer were translated by Fox and Breitbart to be Schumer “calling out” Waters. Waters jumped right back into the game late Monday on MSNBC and told the truth, which is essentially that the children are the only important story — and that she was advocating peaceful demonstration, not violence. She’s right and so is Schumer, in noting that our frustrations are perfectly legitimate, in fact provoked; but the highest, indeed only course of action, is to defeat Trump at the ballot box.
Waters didn’t double down on a bad position, nor did she back down on anything. She merely pointed out in her own words that the real story is not Melania’s troll jacket or Huckster and her cheese plate, it’s the 2,350 children that have been separated from their parents by an administration that is, as Charlie Pierce put it, “one step away from having people hauled off in trucks.” We are the party of rationality, the only adults in the room at this point, with rare and infrequent exception. Schumer and Waters acquitted themselves very well. Trump and his coterie will always find a way to fan a tangential spark to create a smoke screen to obscure the blazing inferno nearby. Hannity had to get in his two cents about “the new low on the left,” bla bla. Catholic guilt, Sean, lay it on with a trowel, while we all yawn. It’s going to take more than your sanctimony to take down Auntie Maxine.
If Hannity wanted to do something constructive he would do well to screen “Fight Club” for Trump’s administration or give them copies of “The Help” so that they can get an idea about what people in restaurant kitchens can do to people that they really don’t like. Not advocating anything like that, merely observing that it takes place, or it did when I worked in restaurants.
However Hengate and Maxine Waters are conflated with the issues that really matter, Trump has gotten himself painted into a corner and he knows it and so does everyone else.