Civil matters

You’ll no doubt have noticed that the party of “Lock her up”, “Rope, Tree, Journalist”, separating toddlers from their parents and tossing them both in separate prisons in their thousands, cutting off healthcare to millions, literally shouting down Democratic colleagues, calling the cops on bar-be-cuers, yelling racial epithets from moving vehicles, and tweeting lies and vile threats to practically anyone from official accounts—they’re suddenly every one of them shocked—utterly shocked and horrified by the incivility they’re encountering from…people who have started pushing back against their affronts to decent society.

Yes, the GOPigs have had their minions pore through the dictionary to find le mot juste, and pulled out their pop-beads to clutch as they use that word. Over and over. With voices shaking in outrage.

The Repugs really understand neither irony nor that whole goose-gander equality thing.

There’ve been numerous instances of this. But the biscuit-taking prince would be David Gergen, who served as a talking head in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton administrations, and who has been one of CNN’s political talking heads for a while. Because on Monday, Gergen’s mouth went on flapping long after his brain stopped sending any intelligent thoughts its way.

Specifically, he pronounced that there has never been a time in American discourse so divisive as our present one. Not even…not even the Anti-War and Civil Rights movements in the 60s and 70s. No, no—a guy who served in Nixon’s White House said:

“I cannot remember a time—the Anti-War movement in Vietnam… The Civil Rights movement in the 60s and early 70s. Both of those were much more civil in tone.”

And then he doubled down: “Even the Anti-War movement was more civil in tone but certainly the Civil Rights movement among the people who were protesting…”

Dave, Dave—put down the Ambien and back away from the microphone.

More civil? More effing civil?

Back in the 60s and 70s, we went on strike. We took to the streets. We shut down universities. We blocked Army convoys. We poured blood on Selective Service records. We burned draft cards, We burned bras. We went to jail. We went to Canada. We marched from Selma to Montgomery. We rode buses. We took over the National Mall. We rioted outside national political conventions. We were escorted by the National Guard into grade schools.

More civil?

We shouted “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” We sang “We Shall Overcome”.  When they told us to shut the fuck up, we yelled even louder.

They doused us with firehoses. They fired tear gas grenades at us. They set attack dogs on us. They cracked open our heads with truncheons. They used electric cattle prods on us. They fired rifles at us.

More civil?

Our blood was splattered across college campuses, school yards, national parks, draft boards, city streets, lunch counters.

They burned crosses on our lawns. They bombed our churches. They lynched our sons. They murdered us. Our bodies were scattered from Watts to Kent State to Mississippi.

They shot Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, before our eyes.

There was nothing—not one fucking thing—civil about it.

If you doubt me, there is ample evidence from contemporary news reports, written, photographic and film. It was literally in all the papers, and on all the evening news broadcasts, day after day, year after year. You’d think that a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School and a CNN pundit would be aware of that. But evidently you’d be wrong. 

(Upon reflection, I suppose it's possible that our Dave is engaging in wishful thinking, imagining he lived through the pretty time when gallantry took its last bow, that world of cavaliers and cotton fields, where gentlemen like him, sippin' bourbon in the Big House, heard nary a whisper from the womenfolk or the slaves. A world that was so much better than the one that, in fact, was there.)

And no, we will not shut up; we will not pretend that this cattle car of fascists represents American values; we will not be talked over; we will not be shouted down. In the words of one hero of these days, we are reclaiming our time.

And you can stuff your one-sided application of civility up right beside that poker you’re sitting on. Y'all released the Kraken. Deal.