Opposing view: Stop defending decorum and do something

The civility police are leaping to the defense of our precious decorum. The problem is that they are attacking those with no power for trying to make their voices heard amid the shrill screams of the biggest demagogue ever to sit in the Oval Office. These lecturers imagine that a measured Jeb Bush-like response to the Trump administration will make this all stop somehow.

They prophesy that sense can overwhelm a regime holding thousands of children hostage from their parents until they agree to return to the country they fled in fear for their lives. They are sure politeness is the way to oppose an administration that is trying to give tens of millions of Americans their preexisting conditions back. Civility, they insist, is required to counter an administration that won’t make a serious effort to count how many Americans died due to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, where thousands are still without power as hurricane season begins again.

Once you realize nothing you can say will stop President Donald Trump from smearing immigrants in a propaganda campaign that invites comparisons to Hitler’s early attacks on Jews, you have to ask yourself what you want to do about it. You can act as if it’s normal to have a president who lies several times a day. You can pretend it’s just fine that Congress doesn’t mind being seen as covering up for a president’s many possible crimes. You can go on acting as if everything is normal as those anti-immigrant smears turn into what many experts call child abuse.

You can pretend that all of these things aren’t happening in your name.

Or you can do what the owner of the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, did. She surveyed her staff, several of whom are gay, then politely asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave. “This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals,” Stephanie Wilkinson said. This action had costs. But she decided that given what we face, there was a far greater cost she wasn’t willing bear. She was not willing to do nothing.