Leslie plucks a small bit out of Gay's essay (the full essay (from a facebook friend) is at
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/opinion/civility-fantasy-power-kirk.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ok8.2ekW.yooo9wXkJKQX
but seems to have missed the first paragraph
After encouraging podcast listeners of the recently deceased Charlie Kirk to become online vigilantes in search of anyone “celebrating” Mr. Kirk’s death, Vice President JD Vance said last week: “We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility. And there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination.”
Vance was doing what conservatives often do — conjuring people up so his followers have someone specific to foment against. This brand of demagoguery is incredibly dangerous, because when informally deputized vigilantes realize that few real enemies exist, they accept any substitute. They direct their manufactured ire toward innocent people, marginalized groups and, eventually, one another.
I'm curious if Leslie thinks Vance (and others) are practicing 'civility' by making claims that a large portion of the left was somehow celebrating Charlie Kirk's death. It seems to me that civility has to start with some sort of acceptance of reality, not creating a false one and then demanding that everyone kowtow to that.
Gay also gets a shot in at Klein when she writes; In the fantasy of civility, if we are polite about our disagreements, we are practicing politics the right way. If we are polite when we express bigotry, we are performing respectability for people whom we do not actually respect and who, in return, do not respect us. The performance is the only thing that matters. Ouch.
A couple more paragraphs And the notion of two groups— civil and not — is predicated on the idea that we’re all playing by the same rules, and we’re standing on equal footing, untroubled by the inequities and bigotries of the world. As I said, civility is a fantasy, because our political discourse never happens in a vacuum. It happens in the beautiful mess of the real world. It is naïve, at best, to believe civility is more important than who we are, what we stand for and how.
and these two Calling for civility is about exerting power. It is a way of reminding the powerless that they exist at the will of those in power and should act accordingly. It is a demand for control.
Civility is wielded as a cudgel to further clarify the differences between “us” and “them.” It is the demand of people with thin skin who don’t want their delicate egos and impoverished ideas challenged. And it is a tool of fearful leaders, clinging to power with desperate, sweaty hands, thrilled at the ways they are forcing people, corporations and even other nations to bend to their will but terrified at what will happen when it all slips away.
Good stuff, and I recommend her book 'Bad Feminist'. Her TED talk is here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxt_MZKMdes
For berserk, there are two etymologies, one is bare-shirt (suggesting that the warriors wore no armor) or bear shirt (wore bear skins). It's in Old Norse, but doesn't appear in Old English. My Old English teacher favored the bear shirt etymology, because of the etymology of the word bear, 'brown one' in Indo European, This is because the actual word for bear (*rktos) was a taboo word, and no one wanted to summon or anger one of those bad boys. Which is precisely the opposite of having something like 'going postal' become an everyday phrase of annoyance.
They speculate it could be about compensation for the farmer whose land was destroyed, but I also wonder if it isn’t a humorous extension of “plowing” into the ground.
I seem to recall it referencing the 6' by 3' patch out ground for a grave. Ground which wouldn't be built on, and so was forever rural.
I believe this comes from accounts (probably even a film, most likely 8 mm) of chimpanzees (or maybe gorillas?). This behavior seems to occur where humans would shout insults, without reaching the point of physical altercation. But naturally American viewers would see anything but stuff being thrown and hitting others -- i.e. a physical altercation, and with weapons.
I haven't commented much on Trump because I thought everyone here was pretty much in agreement that he is a self-absorbed, narcissistic, immoral, unethical boofun running roughshod over the law, the Constitution, and people's lives.
OED says "bought the farm" is recent (1950s) USAF slang originally for a fatal plane crash. They speculate it could be about compensation for the farmer whose land was destroyed, but I also wonder if it isn't a humorous extension of "plowing" into the ground.
The berserkers were apparently Norse or Germanic warriors:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker
Going ape-shit
I have no idea regarding the etymology...
On a more positive note, Farsi can be quite dramatic and poetic even when it cones to everyday expressions.
So you might hear "ghorbunet beram" 10 times a day, especially when there are children around. It literally means "I would sacrifice myself/die for you" but translates as "I love you (so much" or "you are so lovely / sweet" :)
The minor property damage and a bit of unwelcome noise that constitutes the alleged "unlawful behavior" on the part of the demonstrators does not come within a billion parsecs of the lawless violence being unleashed by our government upon its own citizens. A dyed in the wool glibertarian should be up in arms about this (ya' know, small government, FREEDUMB, yadda' yadda')....but all we get is the sanewashing of fascism.
One can't profitably debate anything with Trumpists - they don't believe in facts, or reason. But one be civil when explaining that.
I welcome CharlesWT's presence here. It's helpful to have someone to show us the evidence of unlawful behaviour by protesters in Portland. Before his comments, I had a slight concern that there might be facts I was unaware of which could shift my view: now I am sure there are not. Still, I'd welcome it if he were to acknowledge that what he's reported is a long, long way away from Trump's "the radical left's reign of terror" in a "war-ravaged" city.
"Bought the farm" is certainly American. A British equivalent would be "gone for a Burton". It makes good sense for 'a Burton' there to be a beer, but other derivations have been suggested.
"buying the farm" sound more American to me. Although 'farmer' as a term already existed in the Middle Ages (yeoman farmer), one is more accustomed to 'peasant', and 'farm' sounds more USian. I guess 'farm(er)' has the connotation of 'free' while peasant implies 'tenant'. Iirc* the yeomanry was 'agriculturalists' actually owning their land but not being noble while a peasant was dependent on (of?) a landlord.
I don't agree with Gay (or at least Gay's point of view as presented here) and generally do agree with Leslie.
Yes, civility is absolutely "inauthentic", as Gay states, in the sense she calls out - it absolutely is a performance. As are many of the basic daily protocols we engage in to avoid pissing each other off and generally making each other's lives unnecessarily difficult.
Don't cut in line. Let folks get off the bus before you try to get on. Make sure everyone at the table has had at least something to eat before you go for second helpings. Say "please" and "thank you".
All of these things require us to consider other folks before, or at least in addition to, asserting our own wishes and interests.
And all of these things make it possible for us to co-exist large and complex societies. Or even small and complex societies, where "complex" is just way of saying different people want and value different things.
So there is tremendous value in civility.
The statement I've been making about civility in current-day social and political discourse in this country is not that it's a fantasy or of no value.
My statement is that it's not *available*. It's not on offer.
If I decline to engage in discussion about where things are at right now with Trumper friends and family members, it's not because I have no interest in their perspective or their experience. It's because my experience has been that the conversation will not be particularly fruitful.
To be perfectly candid, the mindset of most conservatives, and especially of Trump supporters, most reminds me of people I knew (and know) from my days among the Christian fundamentalists. They have a set of beliefs that lets them interpret the world in a way that makes sense of their sense of threat or unease. That provide them with an identity. And to challenge those ideas is to challenge that sense of identity, which changes the conversation from a thoughtful exchange of ideas into something more existential.
It is possible to get through all of that, but it's a huge amount of work, and there really aren't any contexts for doing it.
I first started hanging out on political blogs somewhere around 2001 - just after 9/11, when the whole USA Patriot Act debate was going on and Bush II was ginning up support for invading Iraq. I wanted to understand what people were thinking so I went to conservative blogs. I forget all of them, but the place I spent the most time was RedState, back in the early days before they purged anybody who wasn't on board with the conservative agenda. And I do mean purge, it was explicit and intentional. I used to post there as "amos".
Before I left I spent probably hundreds of hours having what were, to me, some of the strangest conversations I've ever had. The things a lot of folks there believed seemed outlandish to me, almost to the point of parody. But there they were, and for a while at least, they were open to discussing all of it with the likes of me.
That *is no longer available*. I would no longer be welcome there, at all.
I found my way here when there were still a lot of conversative voices here. And over time this place has sorted itself into a by-far-majority liberal to left-ish place.
Which I find congenial, but it doesn't afford conversation across the "great divide".
And to be honest, the actions of the current administration pretty much demand that folks pick a side. What is the reasonable conversation to have about the utter denial of due process to people who happen to speak Spanish?
The conversation I would really like to have would begin with "why are you afraid of Hispanic people?". Or black people, or trans people, or gays. It really seems like folks don't just disapprove or dislike those folks, but instead feel threatened by them.
"It's the end of Western civilization!". Right?
Where the hell does that come from? I'd like to know that. But I don't see an available path to getting to that conversation.
And so here we are.
Long comment, thanks as always for your indulgence.
A couple of (practically off topic) thoughts occurred to me while reading this:
First, how many here (who weren't already familiar with her) read Sanae Takaichi's name and immediately thought "female". I'm aware that anyone with a Japanese first name ending with a vowel followed by e (or, especially, ending in ko) will be female. But then, I have friends and family who are ethnic Japanese, so I'm hardly typical.
Second, the whole definition of "immigrant" varies. Even though it consistently carries the connotation of "not from here." For example (sorry, Hartmut!) someone of Turkish ancestry in Germany will tend to be viewed as not-German, even if the family has been there for several generations. Then there's California.
Growing up (perhaps still today), you were a real Californian if you were born here, or even moved here with you family when young. Everybody who moved here as an adult was, not exactly "foreign", but close. Definitely "not from here." Even if they came here from elsewhere in the US. If you were Hispanic? Hispanics were here a couple of centuries before the first Anglos showed up. So it still depended on whether you were born in California. East Asian? There were still Issei (immigrants from Japan) around, but most ethnic Japanese, and pretty much all ethnic Chinese, were born here -- so, all real Californians.
One quick test: there is a city just north of San Diego-- La Jolla. Any real Californians will unthinkingly read that as La Hoy-ya. Wereas recent arrivals tend to say La Jol-la. And that applies even to those of us who don't speak Spanish. We learn to pronounce Spanish words at least approximately correctly just from constant exposure growing up.
Perhaps that has something to do with climate. In Germany, untended ground tends to sprout grass pretty quickly. In the US, especially the western US, untended ground tends to be dust. For quite a while across the Great Plains; pretty much permanently in the Southwest.
Ah, I see from this Ian Leslie piece that Roxane Gay in the NYT(I hadn't read it) may have been making something like the argument that I was finding hard to get my head round from nous and russell. The piece by Leslie reflects at least some of what I think about it. (I have not ever tried to copy such a long piece on the new site before - let's see what happens).
Is Civility a Fantasy?
Maybe - But It's One That Democracy Depends On
Ian Leslie
Oct 04, 2025
∙ Paid
This week: is there any point to civility? (Includes a brief jaunt through its history).
In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, JD Vance hosted an edition of The Charlie Kirk Show. This is what America’s leading statesman do now, at moments of national crisis: rather than deliver a sober address from behind a lectern, they grab a mic and start frothing. In conversation with Stephen Miller, Vance said, “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out. Hell, call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility, and there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination.”
It was the latest example of Vance’s frictionless hypocrisy. In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that a DOGE staff member had boasted, just last year, about being a racist. Vance defended the aide and attacked “journalists who try to destroy people”. He said, “I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life.” So - cancel culture is bad, but if you see someone posting a dumb tweet about Kirk, it’s your patriotic duty to get them fired. This is before we get to the absurdity of claiming to believe in civility while acting as head boy to a president who glories in insulting opponents and using the f-word. You might suspect Vance of self-parody if he weren’t so joyless.
Last week the academic and essayist Roxane Gay denounced Vance’s words in a column for the New York Times. She didn’t just criticise his double standards; she denounced the idea of civility itself, calling it “a fantasy”. Often, people criticise a double standard without saying which of the two standards they prefer, which always strikes me as evasive, so I commend her boldness. But I think Gay comes down on the wrong side here.
Gay declares her argument in this paragraph:
Civility — this idea that there is a perfect, polite way to communicate about sociopolitical differences — is a fantasy. The people who call for civility harbor the belief that we can contend with challenging ideas, and we can be open to changing our minds, and we can be well mannered even in the face of significant differences. For such an atmosphere to exist, we would have to forget everything that makes us who we are. We would have to believe, despite so much evidence to the contrary, that the world is a fair and just place. And we would have to have nothing at stake.
She goes on to argue that demands for civility assume everyone operates from equal footing, ignoring actual inequalities. She says that civility is used to silence dissent and exercise social control. It requires marginalized people to be polite, even as their rights are stripped away.
Let’s start with what I agree with.
I agree with Gay that in what she calls the “beautiful mess” of a modern democracy, political protest can’t be cautious or demure. Even if I think there’s too much anger in politics at the moment, I don’t yearn for a world in which politics is a super-rational Oxford seminar. Politics entails disagreement over things we care about; it’s inevitably emotional and personal. It shouldn’t be a blood sport but it shouldn’t be bloodless. An emotional outburst can sometimes tell us more than a carefully constructed argument. As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “Sometimes, a scream is better than a thesis.”
I also agree that the “fantasy” of a perfectly polite political conversation can be used to exclude whole groups of people from the realm of legitimate discourse. In fact, that was one of the original functions of civility. In England, the distinction between civilised and barbarous behaviour emerged around the same time - the early modern period - as Englishmen were asserting the right to invade, dominate and exploit other countries.
Society was also becoming less stratified, which led the upper classes to develop an elaborate and strictly enforced system of social etiquette, partly to keep vulgar tradesmen in their place. They then bequeathed these fine manners to genteel American Southerners, who used them to justify the exclusion of black Americans from the democratic commonweal.
To rebel against an established order has often meant rebelling against its version of civility. When Martin Luther took on the Catholic Church, he adopted the Trump-like tactic of using deliberately rude and offensive language, in order to signal that this wasn’t going to be business, or theology, as usual. He described his opponents as “the scum of all the most evil people on earth” and called Pope Paul III “dearest little ass-pope” and “pope fart-ass”.
But the post-Reformation era also shows us why Gay might be wrong to conclude that civility is unnecessary. Modern ideas of “diversity” and inclusion”, which I’d guess she supports, are rooted in habits of social behaviour which emerged during that time. As the Church splintered, people in Europe and the New World struggled to work out how to live alongside those they regarded as fundamentally alien, and wrong about everything. The rise of commercial society in the eighteenth century made this question more pressing, as did an unwillingness to return to the religious wars of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
The profit motive bred respectful interactions across barriers of race and religion. Voltaire said of the London Stock Exchange: “Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian deal with each other as though they were all of the same faith.” Civility ceased to mean just decorum, which was about maintaining distinctions of rank, and started to mean politeness, which was more democratic. The French novelist Mademoiselle de Scudry described it as “not wanting to be the tyrant of conversation.” As a woman in male society she would have appreciated norms which allowed quieter voices to be heard over louder ones.
Gay argues that civility is inauthentic, a mere “performance”. In almost Lutheran terms, she writes, “Civility obsessives love a silver-tongued devil, wearing a nice suit, sporting a tidy haircut, while whispering sweet bigotries.” It’s a perennial objection. Civility, in its various forms, has always been criticised as dishonest and hypocritical. Why can’t be just be true to who we are, and speak as we feel?
The problem is that if we always do that, we won’t be able to live with each other. Thomas Hobbes lived through England’s civil war, which he viewed as a religious war. and came to believe that a measure of pretence is vital to peaceful society. He found virtue in hypocrisy. Within the skull of each individual may be thoughts filthy, profane or sublime. We can’t necessarily control those, but we can control which thoughts we display to others. Civility helps us to govern this performance in accordance with the public good.
We ought to have learnt by now that too much ‘authenticity’ is harmful. Today’s hottest differences of opinion may not be religious in the traditional sense but they are hardly less fervent. One of the dangers of social media is that it allows us to see other people’s unvarnished inner monologues, which spreads conspiracy, hostility and distrust. (As John Podhoretz asks, how would American society have behaved if social media had existed on September 11, 2001?). Civility might be a fantasy, or at least a social fiction, but it’s one that democracy depends on. That’s why enemies of democracy disdain it.
It’s true that basic courtesies can ramify into a complex code that, like any code, hands an advantage to those who know it. But eighteenth-century English aristocrats are hardly the only culprits here. Modern codes of political correctness, ambiguous and ever-shifting, are used by the educated middle classes to hoard authority. If I can successfully label the words you use as “offensive” then I can stop people listening to you. Of course, some words and some views really are offensive and should be disqualifying. But narrowing the boundaries of civil discourse has long been a means by which the powerful silence undesirables, ever so politely.
The minimal sufficient response to anyone who argues against civility is, “Fuck you”. That would, of course, mean the end of the argument, but that’s the point. You cannot have any argument, you cannot have any politics, without some measure of civility. Nobody truly believes it to be unnecessary, otherwise they wouldn’t bother making an argument against it and certainly not in the august pages of the New York Times.
What we’re really debating is the form it should take. Yes, some forms stifle dissent and punish the weak; that doesn’t make civility itself any less essential. The problem with Vance and Trump is obviously not that they uphold civility too stringently; it’s the opposite. They are making war on civility. It’s odd that one of their passionate opponents should want to join the same side.
The first expression that immediately leapt to mind for me was "bite the dust." As I scanned down, I read the link to the previous "Typepad bites the dust" post. Had already I read it subconsciously? I tend to think so, but it's unknowable, at least with current technology.
I should also note that 'gawp' tends to have a positive meaning, so it is not the right word. Appalled or aghast might be closer, but there's not a word for when something just short circuits any sort of judgement and you just stand there, slack-jawed.
"(etwas) bis zur Vergasung (tun)" (to do something up to the gassing)
It means to (have to) do something beyond the point where it gets really annoying/cumbersome/intolerable, e.g. having to work overtime constantly or a sports trainer or PE teacher forcing yet another round around the stadium (and then another, and another...)
Originating from WW1 and popular in the inter-war years. Since WW2 there is a taboo because most people assume it is referring to the holocaust. But it is still used, often unthinkingly.
Granted, being in a single family dwelling would tend to avoid that scenario.
No guarantee. These guys (and the police too) get addresses wrong all the time and will not listen (let alone admit fault). There is also a tendency to leave the place crashed and the pets shot. And don't try home defense or you'll join the pets.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
Leslie plucks a small bit out of Gay's essay (the full essay (from a facebook friend) is at
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/opinion/civility-fantasy-power-kirk.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ok8.2ekW.yooo9wXkJKQX
but seems to have missed the first paragraph
After encouraging podcast listeners of the recently deceased Charlie Kirk to become online vigilantes in search of anyone “celebrating” Mr. Kirk’s death, Vice President JD Vance said last week: “We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility. And there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination.”
Vance was doing what conservatives often do — conjuring people up so his followers have someone specific to foment against. This brand of demagoguery is incredibly dangerous, because when informally deputized vigilantes realize that few real enemies exist, they accept any substitute. They direct their manufactured ire toward innocent people, marginalized groups and, eventually, one another.
I'm curious if Leslie thinks Vance (and others) are practicing 'civility' by making claims that a large portion of the left was somehow celebrating Charlie Kirk's death. It seems to me that civility has to start with some sort of acceptance of reality, not creating a false one and then demanding that everyone kowtow to that.
Gay also gets a shot in at Klein when she writes; In the fantasy of civility, if we are polite about our disagreements, we are practicing politics the right way. If we are polite when we express bigotry, we are performing respectability for people whom we do not actually respect and who, in return, do not respect us. The performance is the only thing that matters. Ouch.
A couple more paragraphs
And the notion of two groups— civil and not — is predicated on the idea that we’re all playing by the same rules, and we’re standing on equal footing, untroubled by the inequities and bigotries of the world. As I said, civility is a fantasy, because our political discourse never happens in a vacuum. It happens in the beautiful mess of the real world. It is naïve, at best, to believe civility is more important than who we are, what we stand for and how.
and these two
Calling for civility is about exerting power. It is a way of reminding the powerless that they exist at the will of those in power and should act accordingly. It is a demand for control.
Civility is wielded as a cudgel to further clarify the differences between “us” and “them.” It is the demand of people with thin skin who don’t want their delicate egos and impoverished ideas challenged. And it is a tool of fearful leaders, clinging to power with desperate, sweaty hands, thrilled at the ways they are forcing people, corporations and even other nations to bend to their will but terrified at what will happen when it all slips away.
Good stuff, and I recommend her book 'Bad Feminist'. Her TED talk is here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxt_MZKMdes
"
I haven’t commented much on Trump because I thought everyone here was pretty much in agreement...
Pretty much sums it up. I appreciate your comments about what a sane immigration policy would look like as well.
Common ground, y'all!
And I appreciate your grace in receiving the occasional pile on. It ain't always fun being the minority voice.
On “WTF moments at cultural borders”
For berserk, there are two etymologies, one is bare-shirt (suggesting that the warriors wore no armor) or bear shirt (wore bear skins). It's in Old Norse, but doesn't appear in Old English. My Old English teacher favored the bear shirt etymology, because of the etymology of the word bear, 'brown one' in Indo European, This is because the actual word for bear (*rktos) was a taboo word, and no one wanted to summon or anger one of those bad boys. Which is precisely the opposite of having something like 'going postal' become an everyday phrase of annoyance.
"
They speculate it could be about compensation for the farmer whose land was destroyed, but I also wonder if it isn’t a humorous extension of “plowing” into the ground.
I seem to recall it referencing the 6' by 3' patch out ground for a grave. Ground which wouldn't be built on, and so was forever rural.
"
Going ape-shit
I have no idea regarding the etymology…
I believe this comes from accounts (probably even a film, most likely 8 mm) of chimpanzees (or maybe gorillas?). This behavior seems to occur where humans would shout insults, without reaching the point of physical altercation. But naturally American viewers would see anything but stuff being thrown and hitting others -- i.e. a physical altercation, and with weapons.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
I haven't commented much on Trump because I thought everyone here was pretty much in agreement that he is a self-absorbed, narcissistic, immoral, unethical boofun running roughshod over the law, the Constitution, and people's lives.
On “WTF moments at cultural borders”
OED says "bought the farm" is recent (1950s) USAF slang originally for a fatal plane crash. They speculate it could be about compensation for the farmer whose land was destroyed, but I also wonder if it isn't a humorous extension of "plowing" into the ground.
"
Going berserk
The berserkers were apparently Norse or Germanic warriors:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker
Going ape-shit
I have no idea regarding the etymology...
On a more positive note, Farsi can be quite dramatic and poetic even when it cones to everyday expressions.
So you might hear "ghorbunet beram" 10 times a day, especially when there are children around. It literally means "I would sacrifice myself/die for you" but translates as "I love you (so much" or "you are so lovely / sweet" :)
On “Where are the 5 words?”
The minor property damage and a bit of unwelcome noise that constitutes the alleged "unlawful behavior" on the part of the demonstrators does not come within a billion parsecs of the lawless violence being unleashed by our government upon its own citizens. A dyed in the wool glibertarian should be up in arms about this (ya' know, small government, FREEDUMB, yadda' yadda')....but all we get is the sanewashing of fascism.
Come on folks....perspective, please.
What does Portland think of this?
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/02/nx-s1-5558406/oregon-officials-and-residents-say-portland-isnt-war-ravaged
On “WTF moments at cultural borders”
Or perhaps to commit suicide by hanging by standing on a bucket and kicking it out from under the feet.
"
"Kick the bucket" is an 18th-century phrase where bucket is another name for a beam. Perhaps kicking while hanging from a beam.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
One can't profitably debate anything with Trumpists - they don't believe in facts, or reason. But one be civil when explaining that.
I welcome CharlesWT's presence here. It's helpful to have someone to show us the evidence of unlawful behaviour by protesters in Portland. Before his comments, I had a slight concern that there might be facts I was unaware of which could shift my view: now I am sure there are not. Still, I'd welcome it if he were to acknowledge that what he's reported is a long, long way away from Trump's "the radical left's reign of terror" in a "war-ravaged" city.
On “WTF moments at cultural borders”
"gotta go see a man about a horse"
"
"Bought the farm" is certainly American. A British equivalent would be "gone for a Burton". It makes good sense for 'a Burton' there to be a beer, but other derivations have been suggested.
"
"buying the farm" sound more American to me. Although 'farmer' as a term already existed in the Middle Ages (yeoman farmer), one is more accustomed to 'peasant', and 'farm' sounds more USian. I guess 'farm(er)' has the connotation of 'free' while peasant implies 'tenant'. Iirc* the yeomanry was 'agriculturalists' actually owning their land but not being noble while a peasant was dependent on (of?) a landlord.
*too lazy to look it up
"
Is the phrase American in origin?
On “Where are the 5 words?”
I don't agree with Gay (or at least Gay's point of view as presented here) and generally do agree with Leslie.
Yes, civility is absolutely "inauthentic", as Gay states, in the sense she calls out - it absolutely is a performance. As are many of the basic daily protocols we engage in to avoid pissing each other off and generally making each other's lives unnecessarily difficult.
Don't cut in line. Let folks get off the bus before you try to get on. Make sure everyone at the table has had at least something to eat before you go for second helpings. Say "please" and "thank you".
All of these things require us to consider other folks before, or at least in addition to, asserting our own wishes and interests.
And all of these things make it possible for us to co-exist large and complex societies. Or even small and complex societies, where "complex" is just way of saying different people want and value different things.
So there is tremendous value in civility.
The statement I've been making about civility in current-day social and political discourse in this country is not that it's a fantasy or of no value.
My statement is that it's not *available*. It's not on offer.
If I decline to engage in discussion about where things are at right now with Trumper friends and family members, it's not because I have no interest in their perspective or their experience. It's because my experience has been that the conversation will not be particularly fruitful.
To be perfectly candid, the mindset of most conservatives, and especially of Trump supporters, most reminds me of people I knew (and know) from my days among the Christian fundamentalists. They have a set of beliefs that lets them interpret the world in a way that makes sense of their sense of threat or unease. That provide them with an identity. And to challenge those ideas is to challenge that sense of identity, which changes the conversation from a thoughtful exchange of ideas into something more existential.
It is possible to get through all of that, but it's a huge amount of work, and there really aren't any contexts for doing it.
I first started hanging out on political blogs somewhere around 2001 - just after 9/11, when the whole USA Patriot Act debate was going on and Bush II was ginning up support for invading Iraq. I wanted to understand what people were thinking so I went to conservative blogs. I forget all of them, but the place I spent the most time was RedState, back in the early days before they purged anybody who wasn't on board with the conservative agenda. And I do mean purge, it was explicit and intentional. I used to post there as "amos".
Before I left I spent probably hundreds of hours having what were, to me, some of the strangest conversations I've ever had. The things a lot of folks there believed seemed outlandish to me, almost to the point of parody. But there they were, and for a while at least, they were open to discussing all of it with the likes of me.
That *is no longer available*. I would no longer be welcome there, at all.
I found my way here when there were still a lot of conversative voices here. And over time this place has sorted itself into a by-far-majority liberal to left-ish place.
Which I find congenial, but it doesn't afford conversation across the "great divide".
And to be honest, the actions of the current administration pretty much demand that folks pick a side. What is the reasonable conversation to have about the utter denial of due process to people who happen to speak Spanish?
The conversation I would really like to have would begin with "why are you afraid of Hispanic people?". Or black people, or trans people, or gays. It really seems like folks don't just disapprove or dislike those folks, but instead feel threatened by them.
"It's the end of Western civilization!". Right?
Where the hell does that come from? I'd like to know that. But I don't see an available path to getting to that conversation.
And so here we are.
Long comment, thanks as always for your indulgence.
On “The DIY party”
A couple of (practically off topic) thoughts occurred to me while reading this:
First, how many here (who weren't already familiar with her) read Sanae Takaichi's name and immediately thought "female". I'm aware that anyone with a Japanese first name ending with a vowel followed by e (or, especially, ending in ko) will be female. But then, I have friends and family who are ethnic Japanese, so I'm hardly typical.
Second, the whole definition of "immigrant" varies. Even though it consistently carries the connotation of "not from here." For example (sorry, Hartmut!) someone of Turkish ancestry in Germany will tend to be viewed as not-German, even if the family has been there for several generations. Then there's California.
Growing up (perhaps still today), you were a real Californian if you were born here, or even moved here with you family when young. Everybody who moved here as an adult was, not exactly "foreign", but close. Definitely "not from here." Even if they came here from elsewhere in the US. If you were Hispanic? Hispanics were here a couple of centuries before the first Anglos showed up. So it still depended on whether you were born in California. East Asian? There were still Issei (immigrants from Japan) around, but most ethnic Japanese, and pretty much all ethnic Chinese, were born here -- so, all real Californians.
One quick test: there is a city just north of San Diego-- La Jolla. Any real Californians will unthinkingly read that as La Hoy-ya. Wereas recent arrivals tend to say La Jol-la. And that applies even to those of us who don't speak Spanish. We learn to pronounce Spanish words at least approximately correctly just from constant exposure growing up.
On “WTF moments at cultural borders”
Perhaps that has something to do with climate. In Germany, untended ground tends to sprout grass pretty quickly. In the US, especially the western US, untended ground tends to be dust. For quite a while across the Great Plains; pretty much permanently in the Southwest.
On “Where are the 5 words?”
Ah, I see from this Ian Leslie piece that Roxane Gay in the NYT(I hadn't read it) may have been making something like the argument that I was finding hard to get my head round from nous and russell. The piece by Leslie reflects at least some of what I think about it. (I have not ever tried to copy such a long piece on the new site before - let's see what happens).
Is Civility a Fantasy?
Maybe - But It's One That Democracy Depends On
Ian Leslie
Oct 04, 2025
∙ Paid
This week: is there any point to civility? (Includes a brief jaunt through its history).
In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, JD Vance hosted an edition of The Charlie Kirk Show. This is what America’s leading statesman do now, at moments of national crisis: rather than deliver a sober address from behind a lectern, they grab a mic and start frothing. In conversation with Stephen Miller, Vance said, “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out. Hell, call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility, and there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination.”
It was the latest example of Vance’s frictionless hypocrisy. In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that a DOGE staff member had boasted, just last year, about being a racist. Vance defended the aide and attacked “journalists who try to destroy people”. He said, “I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life.” So - cancel culture is bad, but if you see someone posting a dumb tweet about Kirk, it’s your patriotic duty to get them fired. This is before we get to the absurdity of claiming to believe in civility while acting as head boy to a president who glories in insulting opponents and using the f-word. You might suspect Vance of self-parody if he weren’t so joyless.
Last week the academic and essayist Roxane Gay denounced Vance’s words in a column for the New York Times. She didn’t just criticise his double standards; she denounced the idea of civility itself, calling it “a fantasy”. Often, people criticise a double standard without saying which of the two standards they prefer, which always strikes me as evasive, so I commend her boldness. But I think Gay comes down on the wrong side here.
Gay declares her argument in this paragraph:
Civility — this idea that there is a perfect, polite way to communicate about sociopolitical differences — is a fantasy. The people who call for civility harbor the belief that we can contend with challenging ideas, and we can be open to changing our minds, and we can be well mannered even in the face of significant differences. For such an atmosphere to exist, we would have to forget everything that makes us who we are. We would have to believe, despite so much evidence to the contrary, that the world is a fair and just place. And we would have to have nothing at stake.
She goes on to argue that demands for civility assume everyone operates from equal footing, ignoring actual inequalities. She says that civility is used to silence dissent and exercise social control. It requires marginalized people to be polite, even as their rights are stripped away.
Let’s start with what I agree with.
I agree with Gay that in what she calls the “beautiful mess” of a modern democracy, political protest can’t be cautious or demure. Even if I think there’s too much anger in politics at the moment, I don’t yearn for a world in which politics is a super-rational Oxford seminar. Politics entails disagreement over things we care about; it’s inevitably emotional and personal. It shouldn’t be a blood sport but it shouldn’t be bloodless. An emotional outburst can sometimes tell us more than a carefully constructed argument. As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “Sometimes, a scream is better than a thesis.”
I also agree that the “fantasy” of a perfectly polite political conversation can be used to exclude whole groups of people from the realm of legitimate discourse. In fact, that was one of the original functions of civility. In England, the distinction between civilised and barbarous behaviour emerged around the same time - the early modern period - as Englishmen were asserting the right to invade, dominate and exploit other countries.
Society was also becoming less stratified, which led the upper classes to develop an elaborate and strictly enforced system of social etiquette, partly to keep vulgar tradesmen in their place. They then bequeathed these fine manners to genteel American Southerners, who used them to justify the exclusion of black Americans from the democratic commonweal.
To rebel against an established order has often meant rebelling against its version of civility. When Martin Luther took on the Catholic Church, he adopted the Trump-like tactic of using deliberately rude and offensive language, in order to signal that this wasn’t going to be business, or theology, as usual. He described his opponents as “the scum of all the most evil people on earth” and called Pope Paul III “dearest little ass-pope” and “pope fart-ass”.
But the post-Reformation era also shows us why Gay might be wrong to conclude that civility is unnecessary. Modern ideas of “diversity” and inclusion”, which I’d guess she supports, are rooted in habits of social behaviour which emerged during that time. As the Church splintered, people in Europe and the New World struggled to work out how to live alongside those they regarded as fundamentally alien, and wrong about everything. The rise of commercial society in the eighteenth century made this question more pressing, as did an unwillingness to return to the religious wars of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
The profit motive bred respectful interactions across barriers of race and religion. Voltaire said of the London Stock Exchange: “Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian deal with each other as though they were all of the same faith.” Civility ceased to mean just decorum, which was about maintaining distinctions of rank, and started to mean politeness, which was more democratic. The French novelist Mademoiselle de Scudry described it as “not wanting to be the tyrant of conversation.” As a woman in male society she would have appreciated norms which allowed quieter voices to be heard over louder ones.
Gay argues that civility is inauthentic, a mere “performance”. In almost Lutheran terms, she writes, “Civility obsessives love a silver-tongued devil, wearing a nice suit, sporting a tidy haircut, while whispering sweet bigotries.” It’s a perennial objection. Civility, in its various forms, has always been criticised as dishonest and hypocritical. Why can’t be just be true to who we are, and speak as we feel?
The problem is that if we always do that, we won’t be able to live with each other. Thomas Hobbes lived through England’s civil war, which he viewed as a religious war. and came to believe that a measure of pretence is vital to peaceful society. He found virtue in hypocrisy. Within the skull of each individual may be thoughts filthy, profane or sublime. We can’t necessarily control those, but we can control which thoughts we display to others. Civility helps us to govern this performance in accordance with the public good.
We ought to have learnt by now that too much ‘authenticity’ is harmful. Today’s hottest differences of opinion may not be religious in the traditional sense but they are hardly less fervent. One of the dangers of social media is that it allows us to see other people’s unvarnished inner monologues, which spreads conspiracy, hostility and distrust. (As John Podhoretz asks, how would American society have behaved if social media had existed on September 11, 2001?). Civility might be a fantasy, or at least a social fiction, but it’s one that democracy depends on. That’s why enemies of democracy disdain it.
It’s true that basic courtesies can ramify into a complex code that, like any code, hands an advantage to those who know it. But eighteenth-century English aristocrats are hardly the only culprits here. Modern codes of political correctness, ambiguous and ever-shifting, are used by the educated middle classes to hoard authority. If I can successfully label the words you use as “offensive” then I can stop people listening to you. Of course, some words and some views really are offensive and should be disqualifying. But narrowing the boundaries of civil discourse has long been a means by which the powerful silence undesirables, ever so politely.
The minimal sufficient response to anyone who argues against civility is, “Fuck you”. That would, of course, mean the end of the argument, but that’s the point. You cannot have any argument, you cannot have any politics, without some measure of civility. Nobody truly believes it to be unnecessary, otherwise they wouldn’t bother making an argument against it and certainly not in the august pages of the New York Times.
What we’re really debating is the form it should take. Yes, some forms stifle dissent and punish the weak; that doesn’t make civility itself any less essential. The problem with Vance and Trump is obviously not that they uphold civility too stringently; it’s the opposite. They are making war on civility. It’s odd that one of their passionate opponents should want to join the same side.
On “WTF moments at cultural borders”
In German one bites the grass instead of the dust before watching the radish from below (no pushing up daisies)
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The first expression that immediately leapt to mind for me was "bite the dust." As I scanned down, I read the link to the previous "Typepad bites the dust" post. Had already I read it subconsciously? I tend to think so, but it's unknowable, at least with current technology.
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Hartmut, holy shit...
I should also note that 'gawp' tends to have a positive meaning, so it is not the right word. Appalled or aghast might be closer, but there's not a word for when something just short circuits any sort of judgement and you just stand there, slack-jawed.
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"(etwas) bis zur Vergasung (tun)" (to do something up to the gassing)
It means to (have to) do something beyond the point where it gets really annoying/cumbersome/intolerable, e.g. having to work overtime constantly or a sports trainer or PE teacher forcing yet another round around the stadium (and then another, and another...)
Originating from WW1 and popular in the inter-war years. Since WW2 there is a taboo because most people assume it is referring to the holocaust. But it is still used, often unthinkingly.
On “Citizenship”
Granted, being in a single family dwelling would tend to avoid that scenario.
No guarantee. These guys (and the police too) get addresses wrong all the time and will not listen (let alone admit fault). There is also a tendency to leave the place crashed and the pets shot. And don't try home defense or you'll join the pets.
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