Drowning in a swamp of incivility

In the troubled days after 9/11, pop icon and New Jersey native found himself in a park in North Jersey looking across at Manhattan, pondering what had occurred.

As the Jersey native tells the story, he encountered a man who told ‘The Boss,’ “We need you now.”

The result was “The Rising,” an album about loss, recovery, and the struggle to go forward in a changed world.

Today we call for a new “Rising,” one that might raise the level of our national discourse.

No, it will not be easy, not in light of what has occurred in the past several days. And certainly not after this week’s controversial Supreme Court ruling on President Trump’s travel ban.

But that is our message today. We call for all of us to rise above the crude, coarse, too often vulgar status of our national conversation. A few things first.

The restaurant owner in Lexington, Va., who politely asked White House press spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave her eatery because she disagreed with “an inhumane and unethical administration” was wrong.

That does not mean she did not have the right to do so. We just happen to believe she was wrong, adding another strident note to our national discord.

As was Huckabee Sanders, who took to her boss’ favorite form of communication, jumping on Twitter to announce that the woman’s actions “say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so.”

This was not her calling a friend and relaying what happened. This was the White House press spokesperson announcing it to the world. That’s part of how we communicate these days. We no longer whisper in each other’s ears. We now shout it for the universe to hear.

The debate since these incidents has focused on how best to register opposition to the president’s policies. Many people seem to think that the time for civility has passed, that we now must be more strident in making our voices known.

I guess you can count California Congresswoman Maxine Waters among them. She encouraged a public gathering to do just that, to harass administration and Trump Cabinet officials when they encounter them in public.

We fear for where all this is going.

Of course, everyone is taking their lead from the commander-in-chief. And of course the president remained nothing if not consistent, responding to the incident involving Huckabee Sanders about the way you might expect. The president went on Twitter and excoriated the restaurant. And he had to add a dash of classic Trump, castigating the Virginia eatery for its cleanliness.

Trump suggested the Red Hen “should focus on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job) rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside.”

Donald Trump uses language in a way the nation has not encountered before from the man who holds the position as the most powerful person on the planet. Sure, all presidents have had their moments. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon could get a little salty in their pitched political battles and the skirmishes they had daily with foes.

But for the most part, those were private moments, they were not shared with the rest of the world.

And that is the heart of the problem. Yes, it is the words that are troublesome. But it is the way they are shared that turns these instances from a private dispute into national headlines.

Now the Left has decided to join Trump in the swamp. They have seen his tactics, and, at least for some, have undergone an epiphany. They realized this kind of fiery rhetoric works, at least in energizing your base.

We are drowning in a swamp of incivility. Maybe it’s time for the Boss to save us once again.

Can we come on up for another Rising, ascending from the muck of our current political discourse?

We have our doubts.