Fight Fire with Fire? We All Get Burned.

It’s been repeatedly noted that a general nastiness now permeates our daily life.

Many of President Trump’s critics have placed the balance of the blame squarely at his feet – claiming that he alone is the root of this new coarseness.  It could be argued that, instead of viewing him as the cause of our new “disease of discourse,” it might be more accurate to see him as but one (albeit important) symptom of it.

Wherever one assigns responsibility for the collapse of standards in our verbal political expression, it increasingly appears that more and more of the President’s detractors are choosing to confront some of his boorish and disgusting statements with, well, even more boorish and disgusting statements.  Recent examples of this “Two-Wrongs-Make-A-Right Academy” (which seems to graduate new celebrities and release them upon society daily) include Robert De Niro grabbing headlines by inserting obscenity into a primetime network awards show and Samantha Bee splashing vulgar and sexist language into a segment on a second-tier late night program.  Shamefully, the audiences’ responses to both displays was nearly unanimous applause.

Once set into motion, the only way to grab headlines is to push the envelope further and further.   Thus Peter Fonda was able to capture a news cycle with one of the more disgusting celebrity tweets in recent memory, going so far to express his disgust with family separation policies by offering, “We should rip Barron Trump from his mother’s arms and put him in a cage with pedophiles.”  Thankfully, he would go on to deliver what appeared to be a sincere apology.  One hopes that Mr. Fonda will stand by that apology.  Others have not.

Self-proclaimed D-list celebrity Kathy Griffin shocked the public with a severed head stunt of the President found by most to be in unconscionably bad taste, later apologized, and then retracted said apology.  Not to be outdone by the growing chorus of vulgarity from artists who might seek to dethrone her, the D-lister’s antics have recently continued apace.  In this paradigm, apologies are offered when the consequences (e.g,, cancelled TV shows and endorsements) are too great to bear.

True, it’s never all that difficult to find celebrities engaging in this kind of crude behavior at the expense of political opponents (particularly when those opponents have an ‘R’ after their name).  Recently, though, the advocacy of boorish behavior has metastasized throughout society to the point that it now even includes support from some of our elected office-holders.  Immediately following the inexcusable expulsion of White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders from a Virginia restaurant, hyper-partisans across the aisle began, well, excusing it.  Some went farther still…

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) has now recommended that ordinary citizens do their part to harass Trump administration officials in public spaces.  Noting that “God is on our side” (a curious observation from a leading figure in a party that mandates a separation of church and state), Rep. Waters went beyond endorsing such crudity in public places to even laud recent developments where such displays follow public officials right to their private homes.  Aside from being terribly irresponsible, having key figures in the “party of the people” advocating the virtues of mob mentality is politically untenable.  Thankfully, Minority Leader Pelosi quickly stepped in to rebuke the tirade.

The current occupant of the Oval Office is no neophyte when it comes to endorsing and modeling rough play in public discourse, even expressing his own wish to resolve public disputes with violent acts.  Less remembered by his critics were similarly-toned displays by his predecessor, who was not above telling his supporters to argue with neighbors and “get in their face,” or rallying his base with observations that when Republicans “bring a knife, we bring a gun.”

Precisely none of this is acceptable among responsible elected officials.  Hackneyed justifications for these behaviors are often of the “Oh, yeah?  Well they started it!” variety.  Conceding that excuses ought to be based on firmer intellectual ground than that occupied by toddlers, recent defenses have embraced the idea that behavior coming from some of our elected officials (almost always President Trump or one of his acolytes) is so egregious that thuggish retaliation is not only permissible but even preferred.

Where does this end?  If personal outrage and perceived individual righteousness are all that is needed to justify indecorous attacks, up to and including stalking/bullying elected officials to their private homes, be prepared for mob rule on all sides.  Rep. Waters knows better.  Would she endorse, say, hundreds of pro-life demonstrators “getting in her face” on her personal property?  With raucous and sanctimonious claims that God is on their side?  That door swings both ways, Madam Congresswoman.

Mobs have no legitimate place in a democratic-republic.  It matters not whether the one who lights the match is the leader of the free world, or someone who stands in opposition to him.

Keep fighting fire with fire?  We all get burned.