Today In "Looking With Alarm" News: Local Publisher Calls For Civility!

File under, "It's Baquets All The Way Down".

So the publisher of my local newspaper has lent his voice to the chorus of Very Serious Media People who want some god damn civility returned to our fucking public discourse.

Civility should still matter

And who can blame him?  After all, what right-thinking citizen doesn't want a return to the Good Olde Days when Republicans were free to shout the most hateful,

vicious,

mob-inciting,

gibberish about the Left

at the tops of their lungs, secure in the knowledge that Very Serious Media People would dutifully pretend that it either wasn't really happening or that it didn't really matter?

So who does the publisher of my local paper blame for this sudden and and precipitous drop in civility in our public discourse?

Oh, c'mon now kids.  You all know the words by heart by now.  Singing it with me!

...

Technology — which we all apparently love — has played an outsized role, I believe.

As technology continues to consume more of our time, we are able to reinforce our beliefs by creating virtual bubbles. These bubbles expose us only to views, statements and images that reaffirm that we are right and others are wrong...

We block messages...

We tune into...

We are exposed to fake news

In short, we’re to blame.

We have become so entrenched on one side or the other...

We want “our side” to win at any cost and we punish politicians who dare to try and reach a compromise.

If they don’t stand on the far left line or the far right line, we try to replace them with someone who will. And we’ve been doing it for too long.

We now label each other with horrible names...

We mock those...

We stifle free speech by shouting down speakers...

Man, "we" sure do suck!   So Mr. Publisher, how, pray tell, do we fix this terrible problem for which, somehow, every single human person in this Land of the Free is equally to blame?

To do so, we need to look in the mirror and and ask ourselves if we’re OK with the negativity and hate coming from all sides.

Ah.

So, a couple of things.

First, it's a leisurely ten minute walk from the offices of the State Journal-Register -- the newspaper that ran this editorial by its publisher -- to the Old State Capitol, which is famous for many things, but possibly most famous for being the spot where Barack Obama announced the kickoff of his presidential campaign in February of 2007.

Those of you who are not Republicans or publishers of newspapers that are anxious to appease Republicans may remember that Barack Obama spent eight years begging Republicans to come to the table.  

That he pleaded with them to help him save the country from a legacy of war, economic collapse, spiraling health care costs, gargantuan deficits and crumbling infrastructure that we had inherited from eight years of George W. Bush.  

That he offered compromise after compromise to save the nation.

And was told by the Republican party, in one, loud, continuous racist scream, to go pound sand. 

Those of you who are not Republicans or publishers of newspapers that are anxious to appease Republicans may remember that Republican leadership met in secret on the day of Barack Obama's inauguration to map out a strategy of deliberate obstruction and sabotage so absolute and extreme that Republican lawmakers ended up filibustering their own bills rather than let Obama sign it into law. 

Those of you who are not Republicans or publishers of newspapers that are anxious to appease Republicans may remember that the Republican base and Republican media immediately rejected him out-of-hand as a tyrant.  A monster.  A Muslim sleeper cell.  A foreign-born usurper in league with our enemies.  The NRA shrieked that patriots should stockpile weapons because Obama's goon squads would soon be kicking down the doors or real Americans an seizing their guns.

It went on an on and on like this for eight years:  Obama calming, persistently calling on the better angels in the Republican party and finding over and over again that there were none, and the Republican party growing exponentially more openly unhinged every day to the point where they nominated and elected a lying, racist con man who was the King of the Birthers i his promise to erase Barack Obama from history.

So when the publisher of my local paper, whose office are just steps away from the spot where Barack Obama launched his campaign, says --

We want “our side” to win at any cost and we punish politicians who dare to try and reach a compromise.

If they don’t stand on the far left line or the far right line, we try to replace them with someone who will. And we’ve been doing it for too long.

-- I have no fucking idea what he is talking about.

And, second, the same paper that saw fit to grab us all by the ear and drag us to courtesy class, also proudly syndicates Ann Coulter.

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