First, let us...
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Get lost, asshole!
Sorry, folks. Little technical difficulty. I don't know who that jackass was, but that was the second strangest B&E I have ever experienced in my life. Anyway, I might as well keep going with the theme. It's sort of like the "professor's challenge." That's a game we play, in which we try to work in whatever has been left on the board from the previous class, just to see if we can do it. Can I handle this one? Yeah, why the fuck not?! In fact, I think nobody is more qualified than yours truly to address this bizarre pseudo-issue.
As a refresher, professional liar, Sarah Huckabee Sanders got herself kicked out of a restaurant, which has a "liars not served here" sign posted, or at least, one implied. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) called for more confrontations of the kind, and backlash against Waters ensued, along with debates about "civility." She was even unjustly accused of calling for violence. Hmmm...
Oh, civility. I'm gonna go on a ramble here. Don't worry, kids. I brewed plenty of coffee. Time for a bit of a tangent, though, because I have to do things in a roundabout way. It'll be fun. I promise.
What kind of fictional villains do you hate to hate? That's a weird question, I know. Villains are supposed to be the characters with whom you don't identify, by general structure, unless you are a psycho. Some villains are really interesting villains because you can identify with them. They have ideological perspectives that make them compelling. Comic books are great for this. My favorite? Magneto. What makes Magneto a great villain is that he is, basically, right. Magneto is a holocaust survivor who sees anti-mutant activities by the government and hate groups as nothing more than naziism redux, and since every effort Xavier makes at the "can't we all just get along" philosophy falls apart, Magneto is kind of right. What makes him villainous is his methodology, but his core perspective is kind of right. You don't have to agree with what he does to understand and sympathize with his perspective. Did you see Black Panther? I admit I didn't read the comics, even though I know I should read Ta-Nehisi Coates's. Did you find yourself thinking that Killmonger was kind of right? Wakanda sat back and did nothing while black people were oppressed around the world and throughout history. Killmonger wanted to do something. You may not agree with what he wanted to do, but Wakanda, by hiding and doing nothing despite its technology, was arguably complicit. Killmonger was kind of right. That's what makes for a great villain. Having a legitimate point and a legitimate perspective. I love works of fiction with that kind of villain.
Then, there are the moustache-twirlers. They're just boring. I don't hate to hate them. I just hate wasting my time with them because they're boring. The easiest way to portray a character as a moustache-twirling villain would be something like having the character kidnap children. Lazy writing. That's just making someone over the top evil. I mean, who does that in real life? Oh, right...
What kind of villains do I hate to hate? The ones who set my blood boiling? The ones who make me crave their comeuppance? The ever-so-civil ones. Example: I just read the fourth book in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. I'm not really a fan, but someone suggested it as a point to skip to for when it gets good. Meh. Anyway, the villain is Aurora, the "Lady of Summer," who is sort of a fairie queen-in-waiting. Not only is she ever-so-polite and proper, she is warm, and gentle, and wants you to know how caring she is, and how much it hurts her to see you in pain. When she's fucking murdering you.
With Aurora, it is less of an act than with other villains who pull the "I hate to see anyone in pain" act while wreaking havoc, but these are the villains who just piss me off the most.
Here's the thing, though. They never fail to act with "civility." Note the sarcastic quote marks. "Civility" is the polish you put on a turd. (Decency is not being a turd in the first place). You can polish a turd, but it's still a turd. The problem with a polished turd is that someone might pick it up. I'd rather you not polish the turd, to avoid any such mishaps. If you go around polishing turds, you are doing a disservice to the world by concealing reality. The reality of a polished turd is that it is still a turd. A villain who behaves as Aurora does in Jim Butcher's Summer Knight is a polished turd. Don't polish turds. Flush them. The last thing we need is a bunch of turds running around giving people e coli because some asshole polished them instead of flushing them.
Decency. That's different from civility. Decency is behaving in an honorable manner and following basic principles of morality. Civility is smiling, and sitting upright and maintaining and even tone of voice, and all of that surface-level stuff.
Civility, I am not the first to note, is the demand made by those in power to those out of power because a) it's a hell of a lot easier to smile when you are in power, and b) there's no reason to express anger when you have all the power. Telling people out of power not to express anger because it's uncivil? That's a bullshit trap. It's a way to tell people out of power to shut up and take it. With extra condescension.
I am not the first to note that while MLK is now praised for his civility in retrospect, that is not how those in power described him at the time.
Righteous anger is easy to condemn as "incivility." Then again, so is the behavior of Donald J. Trump. I'll get to him. I'm gonna run out of coffee, though. I still haven't even gotten to Waters or Sanders. I should hurry that along.
Maxine Waters. I'm not generally a fan. In Going Off The Rails On A Crazy Train, Waters ranked fifth on my "batshit list." Unlike Pelosi, who made the list on the basis of a leadership position, Waters got there by being Maxine Waters. Trump insulted her intelligence which... Donny doesn't get to do that, but Waters has never really impressed me as being a font of wisdom. So, I approach any mention of Waters with, let's just say, a bias against her that I admit up-front. On the other hand, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Ooooohhh, can that woman lie. Donald Trump is the most crooked politician in American history. I'll state that. He may very well be controlled by a hostile foreign government. He is a racist, a misogynist, grossly incompetent, and he lies more than any human being in history. And Sarah Huckabee Sanders's job is to go on camera and lie to defend him.
That's vile. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is vile. She is playing an active role in the destruction of one of the most important elements of any civil society-- the concept of truth. If she were a fictional character, she'd be a boring villain for the purity of her evil.
At long last, she has no decency. One could find a definition of, "civility" that her behavior meets, but I would find her lies uncivil, or at least indecent, even if she didn't deliver them with her patented sneer. She's not Aurora. She's a boring, one-dimensional villain.
What, then, is she owed? Or rather, let me turn this around. Can I draw a distinction between the "incivility" of what Waters has called for, and how, say, Trump behaves?
Yes. Yes, I can.
Remember when Donald Trump bragged about the size of his penis during a presidential debate? Yes, that happened. It wasn't some nightmare, or hallucination, or something like that. That happened. And then a bunch of racist, redneck fuckwits, with an assist from the FBI director, made that douchebag president. Oh, and he brags about getting away with sexual assault. Do you need a moment? I'll wait...
...
I know, you're still nauseous, but I've got more to say. Hey, it's summer. What the hell? Anyway, after Trump's penile-insecurity debate moment, I wrote this post. Trump was and is regularly attacked for being vulgar and uncivil. That, as I saw it, was never really the problem. To take the cock-brag moment as an example, the problem wasn't that he broke decorum to brag about the size of his penis on the debate stage. The problem was that he is so insecure that he felt the need to do so. So, I started that post with a set of hypotheticals intended to get at the real importance of acting in a well-mannered... um... manner.
Trump is a bully (among many other things). You can be a bully and still follow all of the rules of "civility," though. My current maybe-favorite author, Nora K. Jemisin [swoon], has a term for it: "weaponized politeness." It is the term she uses in reference to the character of Feldspar in The Fifth Season. Feldspar is a woman who rises through the ranks of "The Fulcrum" in part by always following the rules of civility in such a way as to cut everyone around her down. And always with a polite smile. She's vile. Read the book and you'll hate her just as much as your POV character, Syenite. Feldspar is "civil," but she is in no way a good person. I don't give a damn whether you use weaponized politeness or just call everyone "weak," the way Trump does. It's all the same thing to me. The difference is about power. Trump bullies people over whom he has power. Right now, that's pretty much everyone. Whether you do it with crude insults or weaponized politeness is irrelevant.
Protest against someone in a position of power cannot be categorized the same way. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is in a position of power. She abuses that power. She abuses people. To be blunt, she abuses everyone by lying about everything. She diminishes America's capacity to have anything remotely resembling democracy because however we define "democracy," it depends on open debate with at least an agreement that there is such a thing as objective truth. Liars on Sanders's scale undercut the foundations of democracy to such an extent that, yes, she abuses everyone by diminishing the country. She has power, and she abuses it.
I warned years ago that there was no point in interviewing Donald Trump because he is basically Tony Clifton. Sarah Huckabee Sanders can't manage the same pace of lying as Trump, because no one can, but a good faith conversation with her is as futile.
What, then, is "civility" when it comes to engagement with Sarah Huckabee Sanders? She is not making good-faith arguments from a perspective with which I, or Maxine Waters simply disagree. She's a liar, and she is contributing to the downfall of democracy in America.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is facing protest. Whoever is in power will always claim that protesters are violating rules of "civility," and as I said, it is easy to smile and maintain an even tone of voice when you have all the power, thereby turning it into just another condescending attack when the people you hurt voice their opinions.
So, yeah. Civility. I'll take decency instead, thank you very much.
What about the possibility that protests of this kind will cause backlash? I doubt it matters. Trumpkins can't possibly hate Democrats any more than they already do, independent voters will just swing with the economy (which is doing quite well), and generally, the country is pretty much fucked anyway. Look forward to my July 4th post! It'll be celebratory!