Amy Olberding
PUBLIC DISCOURSE is in an accelerating downward spiral of coarse insult, free-flying contempt, and general meanness. We will surely soon reach bottom, an inevitably inarticulate resting place where we quit wasting words and just mutely flip each other off. Since bemoaning our uncivil culture is almost as prevalent as incivility itself, let me forgo any ritual hand-wringing. I register the culture here because it so influences me: as public discourse grows crueler, nastier, and more aggressive, my temptations to be uncivil increase apace, and I don’t like that.
My growing temptations to incivility are diverse and predictable. When one encounters disrespect, the desire to answer in kind is strong. Likewise, with so many pitched to provoke anger, one wants to give them just the outrage they invite. More basically, I find it ever harder to like people and so to act as if I like them—misanthropy does not seem so unreasonable as it once did. But incivility’s most powerful appeal is that it can seem downright righteous.