We had a bit of a kerfuffle on this forum a few weeks ago, which led to a thread (the social conservatism thread that split off from the Kavanaugh thread) being permanently locked. I'm told that the thread raised an important and valid issue, and we're encouraged to make a new thread on that topic.
I'm pretty sure the mods were referring to the original thread topic of social conservatism, specifically whether it's a legitimate ideology or not. Frankly though, I think I already made my points on that. If someone else still wants to argue the point I encourage them to make that thread, but in this political moment I think it's important to address another question the thread raised: how to deal with "uncivil" accusations.
Some background here: I'm sure you've all been sick, right? Have you ever been so sick you vomited over and over to the point of utter exhaustion, and ended up weakly resting your head on the sink or toilet seat even if it's dirty because you just don't care anymore, with sweat pouring off your face and mixing with the puke dribbling from your mouth, pleading to supernatural powers you've never really believed in, "please, Lord, Allah, Buddha, anyone, just make it stop, I'll do anything"?
That's how I felt on the night of the Ford-Kavanaugh hearings--it was that same sense of total and complete exhaustion and emptiness. I wasn't sick, I was just witnessing the outpouring of rage and hate from every corner of the political world after Ford and Kavanaugh testified to the Senate. Not just watching, but taking it in, really feeling the rage of millions of people explode like a bomb. It was a singular experience, like I imagine drinking poison would be if you managed to live through it. And it left me, yes, angry. Angry at this rage that's tearing my country apart. Angry at the bullshit merchants who incite Americans against Americans. Angry at those on the left who screamed loudly about the allegations against Kavanaugh while looking the other way for Keith Ellison or Al Franken. Angry at those on the right who whine about liberals being uncivil or not respecting due process enough while their party's leader openly endorses violence and conspiracy theories about his political opponents.
Most of all, though, I'm angry at the motley collection of centrists, moderates, institutionalists, and heterodox independents whose thinking most reflects my own for whining ineffectually about all this, shaking our heads in judgment from our distant perches at how stupid these emotionally-driven radicals are all being, how obvious it is that everyone should just stop being angry and respect each other again. So attuned to the loud, plain violence of insults and shoutdowns, yet so blind to the quiet, subtle violence of condescension, of dismissing the problems that convulse our society as not worth getting so worked up about (except, of course, problems that primarily concern our tribe like the decline of civility or bipartisan cooperation) and treating those who feel differently as a danger to the social order. Fellow centrists who acted like I have, here and elsewhere. Fellow moderates who embody MLK's criticism of the "white moderate" that still stings today: that we would rather people treat each other with a fake respect based on fear of conflict and strife rather than true respect based on justice and mutual understanding. We throw gasoline on the fire, and then wonder why this stupid fire stubbornly refuses to go out.
Since then, though, I've been thinking. Why do we (moderates etc.) heap the blame on others anyway? As members of the political center it's our job to tie left and right together. The center is our jurisdiction; if it's failing, we're primarily responsible for mending it, but our efforts to do so have largely poured more gas on the fire. Why should combatants in this culture war listen to our moralistic lecturing and hectoring about "incivility" when we can't do our own job properly? We've given them little cause to believe that we can mend society, and even less cause to believe that their problems will ever get taken seriously if they listen to us. That kind of trust cannot be demanded as one's due; it must be earned. And one doesn't earn it by getting outraged and shutting down the conversation when someone doubts our sincerity or accuses us of the same everyday human faults that we accuse them of all the time, like succumbing to motivated reasoning to reach a preferred conclusion, caring more deeply about friends and allies than strangers or opponents, or applying double standards. We earn that trust by taking their objections seriously even if they offend or implicate us, and either disproving those objections (to their satisfaction, not ours) or fixing them.
I won't condone hurting someone for the sake of hurting them, but uncivil accusations are a different beast from violence, or even what you might call "pure" insults that communicate nothing other than antipathy. It's dreadfully uncivil to accuse someone of rape, but if they're genuinely convinced that person raped someone, what else are they to do? Tell them to keep their mouth shut and you don't do anything to control their anger--indeed, you make them feel persecuted as well as righteously angry, and you deny their target the opportunity to respond to the accusation. Likewise, if large and growing portions of our society now truly believe that their political opponents are white supremacists, thugs, liars, Marxists, theocrats, misogynists, misandrists, traitors, or some other stripe of asshole, telling them they can't say that because it's terribly rude is a recipe for even greater rage, not peace. If we want civil debate again, we have to address these fears and concerns, and that ironically means accepting that incivility is inevitable now given what people have come to believe about each other. There is simply no realistic way that I can see to litigate such explosive claims without breaking a few monocles in the process.
Those of us who disagree with all this incivility do so not because we're exemplars of stoicism or because everybody else has lost their moral compass. We disagree with the incivility because we don't share the underlying belief that Republicans are Nazis, or that liberals want to destroy America, or what have you. This is not primarily a moral debate, it is a factual dispute occurring on both sides about what our political opponents really think, believe, and are capable of doing if we let our guard down. Are modern American liberals misguided idealists, or brutal socialist revolutionaries? Are religious conservatives sincere or do they just hate women and sexual minorities and use religion as an excuse to restrict their freedoms? Does the left/right generally support antifa/Nazis or not? Do they actually believe our side supports antifa/Nazis, or are they just cynically using guilt by association to fool the public into voting for their guy? In short, are our political opponents dealing with us in good faith, or are they actively trying to do harm? These are important questions, no less so because some of us believe we already know the answers. They need to be discussed, not sarcastically but fairly, and that can't happen if raising such charged accusations is deemed excessively uncivil and punished.
What this moment demands of any who would seek peace and comity is to face this sort of incivility and squarely address the beliefs that underlie it, rather than shrinking from it, censoring it, or attacking the people promoting it. That responsibility goes double for those of us in the political center, who must deliver on our promises of putting petty bickering aside and getting important stuff done through bipartisan cooperation if we want people to trust us again. In short, if we want civility, we must be prepared to tolerate incivility, to withstand the heat of the fire long enough to get to the base of it and put it out. Otherwise our nations, our communities, and our world will continue to come apart.