Let's keep it civil

The vitriol between and among citizens and government debases our contract with one another

The Noble Citizen. The Dedicated Public Servant.

I believe in them. Both. Really, I do. It’s why I do what I do. I believe down to my core that the government should have a relationship with its people. There is something vital to our collective well-being in the call and response between citizens and their government.

As someone who talks (and talks and talks) about the critical role public meetings play in this pas de deux, as someone who trumpets the value of giving citizens a voice to address their elected officials, it pains me to say this. Really, it does.

But some of y’all done lost your blankety-blank brain boxes!

Reading news accounts every morning from across the states — big newspapers, small ones, TV stations — I have a pretty good feel for the big issues of the day in a lot of different areas of our state. I see how some issues deeply divide communities, whether it’s data centers, unauthorized public spending or maybe a coaching scandal.

Usually, and certainly more so around five years ago, there are hot heads, but everyone keeps their hands to themselves, so to speak.

But now, it has also become commonplace to pull up a story where members of the same public body are not disagreeing with each other, they are lambasting one another, cutting them to the quick, “owning” them and questioning their right to breathe air. And then there are the ones who are, literally (though sometimes exaggeratedly) laying hands on each other.

Physical altercations aren’t just an intra-board thing, either. We have citizen-official confrontations. We have citizens being escorted out of meetings, sometimes peacefully, sometimes not.

We have citizens who think the 1st Amendment gives them an absolute, unassailable right to rant and spew invective and lies and profanity, and woe be it to anyone who tries to corral them. “Free speech!” they yell, as if, like garlic to a vampire, it protects them from any bit of restraint.

I say five years ago because that’s when school board meetings became anger-fueld pro-mask/anti-mask cage matches. (And if you ask me, when we talk about kids’ mental health these days, I think we have to take a good look in the mirror and admit to how awful we were to each other during the pandemic, and the kids were watching EVERYthing.)

Since then, there’s been a steep decline in what passes for civil discourse. It’s no longer enough to voice an opinion passionately, now it’s seen as almost normal to cut, cut deeply and then rub salt in the wound.

Take that!

In your face!

There are some who will read this and will nod in agreement: “Yep,” they’ll say, “Those terrible, amoral, evil, criminal, inhuman OTHERS” are the problem. It’s that side, not my side. It’s you, or it’s them, but it’s not me.

But, in reality, it is both. It is all. It matters not whether there is a D or an R or a MAGA next our names. It matters how we behave. We should be better than this. When someone on “our” side goes all loose cannon on the ship of polite company, we should call them out or distance ourselves from them. This alerts our peers that we believe in the marketplace of ideas and the resolution of differences without physical persuasion. It should also alert the wild card that we are not their safe haven, that they have breached what we hold dear.

The misbehavior of some threatens all of our ability to engage with our government. It intimidates some from seeking peaceful redress. It keeps elected from being effective. And none of that does any of us any good.