No unity without listening
If you watch much television, or any television, or if you engage in social media, it’s pretty clear that we tend to punctuate our discourse with exclamation points. Perhaps Jerry Springer was actually a visionary. He understood the marketability of impoliteness and boorish behavior long before it went mainstream.
Civility has fallen out of fashion. Some say it’s overrated. An NPR article in 2019 quotes Lynn Itagaki, an associate professor at the University of Missouri, who said, “Civility has been about making sure that the status quo, the hierarchy of the status quo at the moment, which means racial inequality, gender inequality, class inequality, stays permanent.”
By this redefinition of civility, it would be permissible and even encouraged to meet any injustice, perceived or actual, with an uncivil response. That’s fine if you happen to agree on the injustice. For example, if your candidate loses a presidential election and you believe the election was rigged, storming the Capitol might be an appropriately uncivil response.
Thus, if you disagree with someone and you’re convinced you’re on the right side, what’s the point of a civil response? After all, you’re right and he’s wrong.
For what it’s worth, President Biden struck mostly the right tone in his inauguration speech.
“I pledge this to you — I will be a president for all Americans, and I promise you, I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did,” Biden said. He then signed 15 executive orders undoing various Trump policies.
Unity is a fine message but no amount of rhetorical gymnastics will bring people together unless we’re willing to understand and listen to those with whom we disagree. That means acknowledging that not all of the 74.2 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump are racists and that not everyone who voted for Joe Biden is pushing a Marxist agenda.
From the president on down, unless we’re truly committed to making unity a reality, it won’t happen, no matter how many exclamation points we use.