State of the Discussion

Oh, I forgot the 'clear and present danger' doctrine that Hitler invoked after the 'Night of the long Knives' and that has also been a tool of abuse by US governments.

bobbyp - I read your link and I will admit that I have thought the same thing about our situation more than once.

I think that the constitution could be saved, but it would take another Lincoln or FDR to do it, and a lot of pushing through structural changes to shore up the weakest parts that are making it so hard to prevent the willful vandalism and disregard of the rule of law. I don't think that their critics are wrong to say that they used extra-constitutional means to achieve their ends, but part of their end in both cases was not just to preserve the union, but to preserve the constitution and keep continuity of government.

Of course both ended up having their work undone, and here we are again.

My fear is that this time the current GOP will force a suspension of the constitution and turn tyrant with the intent of undoing the constitution and replacing it with a Christian Nationalist authoritarian government. If so, then I don't know how the union is going to hold.

Here’s another breakdown of the protestors.

Seems sort of accurate.

I was glad to see the "outcasts" included because they are almost always part of the mix. A lot of them have serious mental and psychological issues. They include folks like the guy that Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed for the crime of throwing a bag at him.

Geriatrics are much easier (and less negatively) to explain than Kruse's characterization - they (i.e., we) show up because we're retired and don't have jobs and kids to deal with. Which is to say, we have the time.

Kruse describes folks affected by ICE activity as "out for retribution", which strikes me as wrong. I wonder if she actually knows anyone, or has talked with anyone, who has actually been affected - had friends or family members incarcerated or deported. In my experience they just want to bear witness to their own experience, they aren't out to "get" anybody.

Kruse's characterization of antifa seems extreme, even a bit cartoonish. "They all dress in black and will kill to suppress dissenting views" - again, I have to ask if she has ever actually been around real live antifa or antifa-adjacent people. Some fit the strict definition of domestic terrorism as defined in US law, some don't. And "domestic terrorism" is a very dangerous label to toss around in the current climate.

To the degree that I understand it, at its heart antifa are people who believe many hard core right wingers are fascists and are violent and unreasoning people, who will not respect the law and institutions of governance and so must be met with force. It's not an approach I agree with or support - I think they are basically poking the bear and giving Trump et al an excuse to double down. But neither are they completely wrong about their opponents.

Stakes:

I attend two churches pretty regularly. One is an Episcopal church whose congregation is about 60% Latino. They hold two services a week, one in English, one in Spanish, with a bilingual service once a month. The other is a UU church that has a significant population of gays as well as some trans people. We just hired a minister who is a lesbian.

I live in a very white bread town that is adjacent to towns with sizeable immigrant populations. Dominecan Republic, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Haiti, Russia and Eastern Europe, Ireland. When I say "adjacent" I mean these towns are within 2 or 3 miles of my home. The city of Salem is literally around the corner from me. Most of my daily is in and around Salem, which is about 15% Dominican. I contribute to and have volunteered at a local food bank whose clientele is primarily immigrants.

I make a somewhat haphazard but continual effort to follow a spiritual path that is very much centered on concern for less privileged people - the poor, immigrants, outcasts of any type. By "haphazard" I mean I'm not great at it, mostly because I am temperentally irascible, judgemental, impatient, and have a kind of restless and unruly mind. Nonetheless, I cannot escape the overwhelming and consistent message that god, whoever and whatever that personage is, loves everyone but really really really cherishes and champions less fortunate people.

I often wonder what judgement this country is storing up for itself. Not in the sense of some kind of supreme being throwing bolts of lightning at us, but just in the sense of karma. I really do believe we will pay a price for the crap that is going on here right now.

Ultimately, for me it comes down to a really simple thing - we are obliged to treat other people as fellow human beings, deserving of respect and consideration. "Obliged" not necessarily for some religious or spiritual motivation, but just freaking because. Because there they are, a person like yourself. Treat them as you would be treated, at minimum.

So that's where I'm at with all of this. I spend a lot of time spinning my mental and emotional wheels trying to understand how to live in this moment. I really don't know where it's all gonna lead.

I appreciate having ObWi as a place to vent and work through my own thoughts about all of it. And I appreciate all of your forbearance while I think out loud, at length. Mental flailing, but I'm grateful to have a venue for it.

Are we there yet?

https://outsidethebeltway.com/has-the-constitution-failed/

Are we really to get our panties in a bunch based on the (cherry picked) actions of a small number of anti-fascist demonstrators? THEY ARE NOT THE ONES STEALING OUR LIBERTY!!!!

jfc

Another oddity: "turn and burn."

Reputed to originate regarding air force dog fights. But the most common occurrence, in my experience, regards truckers (or anyone else driving any long distance). Meaning to arrive somewhere and immediately head back in the other direction. In that context, the "turn" is obvious. But the "burn"? Not so much.

But rather than pretend that we will reach agreement, I think civility demands that we accept that there are going to be points that we just disagree on

Sorry, the penultimate paragraph was supposed to be a clear quotation!

I think "bought the farm" for dead dates back to the days when small family farms lived precariously from one season to the next, always struggling to get their mortgage paid off.

"Drank the Kool aid" is relatively new.
Different places have different directions to indicate failure. "The deal went south" maybe comes from "being sold down the river" etc? I read somewhere that in Ireland your deal doesn't go south; it goes west. Does anyone know?

Sure, Leslie isn't implying that. But since Gay starts her essay with Vance's demand for civility, don't you think it is a bit disingenuous to summarize Gay's argument by not even noting that? Unfortunately, he starts off by taking issue with Gay in order to valorize civility when Gay places it in a particular context.

I found what is close to a transcript of Gay's TED talk here
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/02/bad-feminist-roxane-gay-extract

About stakes, I think it is worthwhile to work from cases we might all agree with and then move out to edge cases where we have to tease out things. So, a case that might serve would be the weaponization of anti-antisemitism. While I'm thinking of the Trump administration going after universities because of a claimed failure in dealing with antiseminism. I think, if you look at this in hindsight, you can draw a line to the antisemitism accusations against Labour and Corbyn. It doesn't absolve anyone from charges of anti-semitism, but recognizing that many of the people who are baying for blood have absolutely no stake in it, except as a way to undercut their political opposition is essentially a question of 'stakes'. Going back to civility, if the accusations were being made by a person who actually acknowledged how much their stake is, I think we would have some foundation for civility. But when it is done by someone who has no 'stake' in the issue, it means that civility is a sham.

I won't bring up recent events here, except to say that when someone drops in to specifically set people against each other, that is not linked to any definition of civility in my dictionary, and it would suggest that the person would argue the opposite side if they thought it would achieve their aims.

There is also the problem of fighting distant problems while turning a blind eye to problems closer to home. Chinese must feel this happens when they see people going on about Uyghur and Taiwan, or the usual suspects complaining about how women are treated in Islamic countries. These problems definitely exist, but looking at who has a 'stake' in it can be relevatory.

I've been reading the Memoranda of Conversations in the run up to Nixon going to China. Basically, Kissinger was throwing Taiwan under the bus in order to achieve a rapproachment with China
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v17/d139

Now, Nixon had to take all this back to Congress and the China Lobby basically took out a lot of these things. Understanding US history and politics can make this understandable, but when viewed from the Chinese side, it seems like Taiwan is not something that the US is interested in unless it is a way to undercut China. I don't suggest that we cede Taiwan to China, though I'm not sure how far the US should go in defending it (cf Ukraine), but it reveals, at least to me, that people who make Taiwan their key point in opposing China are perhaps responding to prejudices they have about China rather than considering the actual history and circumstances.

If I were to speak to your particular situation, I'd need to have a pan-opticon view of your exchanges and ideas and the context of those, so yes, in the absence of having complete knowledge of that, one has to grant people principles that they feel they hold deeply. To transpose your example, Australians have been at the forefront of anti-racism efforts and the efforts by individual Australians, such as Peter Norman. But when politicians argue that somehow they, by being members of an Australian polity, are somehow anti racist, that seems a bit strained, not only given Australia's problems of race relations, but also in regard to specific policies and programs. Those principles can and should be examined to reveal places where they might not match up with other principles brought forward. And if those become the topic of conversation among individuals, folks should give the respondent the time and space to make their case, something that is not always easy or even possible. But rather than pretend that we will reach agreement, I think civility demands that we accept that there are going to be points that we just disagree on. Fortunately, we are all works in progress and we do have the possibility of change so ideally, in an environment that has civility, people will be able to change. However, if civility carries the demand that we have to reach agreement, it is, as Gay points out, performative.

Not quite Russell-esque in length and certainly not in content, but we do our best.

...the base of the GOP has decided that Democrats, and Democratic voting states, are on the enemy side of the friend/enemy distinction.

I've decided that Trump-enabling Republicans, which is most of them, are the enemy of humanity in general, and the United States in particular. So you could "both sides" that one.

But I see no reason to be uncivil.
__
I am anti-fascist.

nous, the "GOP and their core voters" and their base, and MAGAs, are clearly not available for civil discussion, and maybe they never will be. But some soi-disant conservatives, and not just outliers like wj, are, and maybe eventually the public discourse, Overton Window etc will shift back somewhat (when healthcare disappears from millions perhaps?), and the habits of civility will be useful among larger populations. One can hope, and try to keep the home fires burning....

Following on russell's comment, I'm going to talk Carl Schmitt again. I know I've written some of this before, but that's all in the archive now, so here it is again for the new site.

I get why russell says that civility is no longer on offer. US conservatism has taken a hard turn into political theology (as described by Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political) since 9/11. Schmitt was very concerned with the concept of sovereignty and where the authority to govern resides. For him the sovereign is the person, or entity, that is authorized by the people to make the distinction between friend and enemy, and decide who is or is not a part of the people when conflicts become existential - the State of Exception. I see this political theology deeply reflected in pretty much everything that the Roberts court has given us. They are always thinking about executive sovereignty and crises.

Civility is not on offer because the base of the GOP has decided that Democrats, and Democratic voting states, are on the enemy side of the friend/enemy distinction. If you doubt this, just look at what Vance has said about the shutdown. He says that the Democrats are "holding the American people hostage." That literally puts Democratic officials - and all the Americans who elected those officials - on the side of the enemy with which the GOP will not negotiate.

The GOP and their core voters do not see this as a political disagreement to be negotiated over. They see Democrats as the enemies of America, to be expelled or subdued in the name of The People.

WTF are we supposed to do with that?

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.

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 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.

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" :)

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.

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.

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.