Last month Steven Mintz, aka.”The Ethics Sage,” wrote a plaintive lament about how far civility has declined in our society. Steven is a distinguished philosopher and writes passionately about ethics. He’s passionate about this topic too, but can offer little in the way of solutions to a problem he has visited before. His most recent essay mostly describes the problem. He writes in part,
“Who should we blame for the decline in civility? There is enough blame to go around, but I will focus on the primary culprits. The ABA survey reports that 34% of those polled said family and friends should hold the primary responsibility for improving civility in society, while 27% said that responsibility should fall to public officials. And 90% of respondents said parents and families are most responsible for instilling civility in children, followed by schools at 6%. This result is surprising. What should a school do if not to foster good behavior, concern for others, kindness and empathy? We have clearly lost our way in that regard. We are only in control of our own actions. However, our behavior can influence others in a positive way. We need to model civil behavior, so our kids learn how to behave in the classroom and at home.”
Mintz ultimately concludes “call me a cynic but I expect things to get worse before they get better.” What would make them get better? The Ethics Sage is whistling past the graveyard to suggest that parents and school have the power to turn things around. The culture itself now encourages and glamorizes incivility.
The news media is uncivil. Elected officials and prominent public figures routinely engage in calculated incivility. In just the past week, Elon Musk told boycotting “X”sponsors to “Go fuck yourself!” Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy two days ago used a speech to tell CNN’s Van Jones to “just shut the fuck up” after Jones accused him of being a demagogue. Earlier this month, Ramaswamy derisively told Chris Christie to “have a nice meal,” mocking the endomorphic candidate’s weight, during the GOP debate. Esteemed actor Robert DeNiro got cheers in multiple public appearances during the Trump administration proclaiming “Fuck Donald Trump!” repeatedly. The leader of the California Democrat Party led a mass chant of those words at a rally. NPR tried to defend Democratic Empty Suit Beto O’Roarke using the term “motherfucker” in a public forum. Republicans have flown “Fuck Biden” flags, and have virtually institutionalized “Let’s Go Brandon!” as code for “Fuck Joe Biden!”
Anyone who watches shows on streaming platforms or cable channels will encounter critically-praised dramas in which uncivil language is often the only language to be heard. “Succession,” a long time HBO hit, seldom featured a single speech by any character that didn’t include at least one iteration of “fuck,” and it was hardly unique.
Manners never get better. They always deteriorate.
Mintz is right, however, when he says,
“Civility represents the quality of our behavior with others in our communities. It signals who we are and what we value. Since the essence of ethics lies in how we are with others, civility and ethics are intricately linked.Civility cultivates a civic code of decency. It requires us to discipline our impulses for the sake of others. It demands we free ourselves from self-absorption. By putting ethics into practice in our day-to-day encounters, civility is that moral glue without which we are lost as a society.”
All true, but the fact is that civility is all but gone as a societal value in the U.S. In fact, the concept of “civility” has been weaponized by those who would censor speech and dissent. It is now impossible to advocate civility without playing into the hands of those whow want to punish “hate speech,” defined conveniently as “speech that opposes the people, organizations, movements and idea we agree with.”
Incivility unchecked inevitably leads to chaos and violence. If those who have outsized megaphones won’t restrain themselves, parents and schools are not going to save us.
Ethics Alarms 
Jack wrote, “Incivility unchecked inevitably leads to chaos and violence. If those who have outsized megaphones won’t restrain themselves, parents and schools are not going to save us.”
BINGO!
How can civility overcome the rights for me but not for thee uncivil crowd when the rot of incivility is coming from all directions and promoted at the highest levels of leadership where it’s as if they’re telling those they disagree with…
Every action has a reaction.
Rights for me but not for thee is fucking with our Liberty and I say, fuck too much with our liberty and you’re in for a bloody beatdown.
Am I advocating for violence, HELL NO, I’m advocating for the lunatics progressives that are chipping away at our liberties driving us towards totalitarianism to stand down before it’s too late.
Lunatic progressives and deplorable MAGA extremists, can’t we get together and have a reasoned and civil discussion about our differences. Maybe we could have a coke, what do you think? Workable? Possible?
Not where I’m from.
What we’ve been seeing from the right is behaviors and politics that are pure reactionary to the hard left’s foundational shift since 2008 (and before) away from freedom, liberty and civility towards what they must see as some kind of delusional cultish utopia of totalitarianism.
It’s really not the political right or even the MAGA extremists that hate everything about the USA and are trying to strip away at our Constitution, Liberty and civility and promote a revolution, it’s progressives that are intentionally trying to fundamentally change the USA. The rise of an absurd candidate like Donald Trump is the reaction of the political right to the left’s decades long shift towards absurdity. Until progressives get their heads out of that place the sun never shines, moving towards more civil discussions is not likely.
I have absolutely no problem with the classic liberals that are left in the Democratic Party but the majority of the left has swallowed the progressive BS and they and their progressives handlers can bite me.
Probably an oversimplification of the problem, but I believe that modern progressives hate the US and how things currently stand because it’s not the Marxist utopia that they believe is possible.
Black people are struggling–therefore it must be a systematic issue, because people are all equal and should have equal results. If there are unequal results, the system is obviously broken. So let’s dismantle that system and create one where everyone is equal, EVEN IF IT MEANS PUTTING THE GOVERNMENT’S THUMB ON THE SCALE. That’s exactly what communism is, in a nutshell.
There’s no way this can be reconciled–the extreme progressives want something antithetical to the United States Constitution.
Maybe we should worry about our own use of vulgarity before we demand it from others. I pledge to not use any vulgarity or pejorative rhetoric in my future posts and ask that I be castigated should I do so.
Remember, all choices have consequences.
I wouldn’t recommend going that far, Chris. Various vulgar expressions, like profanity, have their valid uses. As Rooster Cogburn, Rhett Butler and Admiral Farragut would attest, context is everything. As I related last year, I was fired from a CLE job for exclaiming “FUCK!” in a botched tech rehearsal while in my own office. I could have said “Gadzooks!”—I said “Fuck!” and I would again: in that context, “Fuck!” “Damn” and “Cowabunga!” mean exactly the same thing.
Similarly, I am not going to refrain from defining Donald Trump, among others, as an “asshole,” because I know of no other word that accurately and clearly conveys the negative qualities of that word. There was an op ed recently to the effect that we need more jerks, meaning people who annoy others by mentioning things most people would rather ignore, or who consistently buck systems and bureaucracies, or who deliberately provoke debate. H.L. Mencken was a jerk (and occasionally an asshole).
Jack,
You have to start somewhere and I can only change that which I control.
If others believe it is the only verbiage that will suffice that is their call.
Chris Marschner wrote, “You have to start somewhere and I can only change that which I control.”
I respect the pebble in the pond choice even when the pebble is being dropped in a body of water that’s currently undergoing hurricane force winds.
I disagree with this statement: “I could have said “Gadzooks!”—I said “Fuck!” and I would again: in that context, “Fuck!” “Damn” and “Cowabunga!” mean exactly the same thing.”
It’s not the meaning conveyed. If I accidentally stub my toe in front of my 6-year-old and say “ow!!” he knows I’m expressing pain, surprise, frustration, etc, in a way that is completely acceptable in polite society. If I stub my toe and yell out an expletive, it’s still expressing pain, but in a way that society has declared as profane. I’m essentially teaching him that speaking in a way that makes other people uncomfortable is not an issue he needs to worry about–if the way he speaks makes other uncomfortable, they need to adjust their expectations. It completely takes others’ desires, well-being, needs, etc., out of his ethical calculus for decision-making.
Am I saying that he should never do anything that makes others uncomfortable? Of course not–you simply need to take that consideration into account. If I’m in a hurry because I need to use the restroom, I’m not going to hold open the door for the old lady ten steps behind me, because my need outweighs her comfort. If I’m a militant athiest, I may decide that my need to declare my athiesm by using the names that my very religious mother considers sacred in dirty ways in front of her, but at least I’m still considering her feelings. That’s bad ethical calculation, but it’s still in consideration. But for me to say to myself “the comfort of others is never anything I need to consider in the way I comport myself in public, including personal hygiene and the clothes I choose to wear,” I’m completely ignoring a very salient ethical consideration–how my behavior affects others.
I was just re-watching “The Dirty Dozen.” In one scene, the former mobster and convicted murderer played by John Casevetes is being razzed by the other condemned prisoners. He turns, sneers, and says “Oh dry up and blow away.”
Yeah. That was realistic. The idea in Hollywood those days was that this would stop kids from talking dirty, at the cost of surrendering suspension of disbelief. No doubt the pendulum has swung too far now, but there is a healthy medium. Opinions on where that medium lies differ.
I was intrigued by those poll results, so I traced back through a couple of links to find the results of the survey per se, which, although there are a lot of questions at the end about civility, purports to be about Civic Literacy, which is a completely different thing.
The first question, indeed, is something of a “gotcha,” as the smug lawyers get to revel in the ignorance of mere civilians, a plurality of whom declared the Constitution (as opposed to the “Constitution and authorized federal statutes and treaties”) as the supreme law of the land. Talk about uncivil!
A fair amount of actual ignorance on the part of those surveyed is revealed in subsequent questions. That more people ascribe “We The People…” to the Declaration of Independence rather than the Constitution isn’t good news, but it’s ultimately not terribly important. That fewer than 60% could identify the Chief Justice from a list of names is more troubling. And then there’s the poorly worded question about “[responsibilities]… only for US citizens.” That 18% apparently don’t think non-citizens are required to obey the law is a little terrifying. But “serving in the military” is not currently a requirement of anyone; back when I was a teenager, it was, though… and it was not a responsibility of non-citizens.
But then we get to the subject of civility. All of these questions appear to be multiple-choice rather than fill-in-the-blank or yes/no. In other words, the answers will total 100%. So it’s not that, for example, only 19% of respondents think public officials are at fault, but that 81% didn’t list them as “primarily responsible.”
The next two questions are interesting in another way, as well. Note the verb change from “Who should be primarily responsible for improving civility in our society?” to “Who is most responsible for instilling civility in children?” It might be pertinent to wonder, à la Bill Clinton, what the meaning of “is” is. Is it, here, intended to differentiate between what is and what should be? Or is it simply a re-phrasing? And did the pollsters, as is usually the case, ask the questions in a randomized order?
In any case, I must take issue with Mintz’s “surprise” that only 6% said that schools are “primarily responsible for instilling civility in children.” People are saying that schools bear no responsibility, only that it’s parents, more than anyone else, who ought to be “foster[ing] good behavior, concern for others, kindness and empathy.” That seems reasonable enough to me. Dude, learn how to read poll results.
And then we head off into whether compromise is a worthwhile goal. The correct answer is always “it depends,” and these poll results couldn’t be more meaningless. Compromise as a step towards the betterment of society, even if it’s not everything that could/should be is a good thing. Compromise for the sake of compromise is not. It would have been interesting to compare this year’s figures on compromise with previous years’. Alas, those questions weren’t asked before this year. (We do know that the percentage of people thinking Clarence Thomas is Chief Justice is actually increasing, however.)
Arrghh! I’m done now: time to get back to reading a book I’m reviewing for an academic journal. So far, it’s a lot longer on jargon and pretentiousness than on substance. It’s a collection of essays by multiple authors, so there remains some hope for improvement…
*”people aren’t saying…”
May I be excused a “dammit”?
Recall the fate of Captain Corcoran in HMS Pinafore, who was sent to the dungeon for saying “Damme!”
Did you hear him — He said
Did you hear him? damme, He said He said damme,
Oh, the monster overbearing, damme, Yes, He said He said damme, Yes,
Don’t go near him — damme, He said He said damme,
Don’t go near him — damme, He said damme, damme,
He is swearing — damme, damme, damme,
He is swearing!
Curmie wrote, “May I be excused a “dammit”?
Your offense is unforgivable, it’s to the stocks for you! 😉
Good thoughts.
I will admit that if someone asked me whether the Constitution was the supreme law of the land, I’d say yes. I think there is a sentence in there to that effect. When you add the qualifier ‘and authorized federal statutes and treaties’, I’d say oh yeah, of course, because those things are enumerated in the Constitution.
I would agree with you that it is the parents’ job, as it has been from time immemorial, to install proper values of all types in their children. If your parents teach you to be a jerk, your school is probably not going to dissuade you of it, even if they were trying.
And yes, agree with you on compromising. It is not a dirty word. I think people denounce ‘compromise’ when they are actually thinking of acceding to the other side’s demands without getting anything in return. That’s not compromise. I think all the checks and balances built into our system of government show that our Founders believed that the art of compromise was key to a more perfect union, if I might steal a phrase.
Historically neither party has been so rigidly controlled as they both tend to be these days, albeit I think somewhat more so on the Democratic side. One of today’s problems is that we suffer from a dearth of principled men and women, who will vote their conscience over party.
My father is 83 years old, and I am 57. In all my years I have never heard him utter a single word of profanity – not a “shit” a “damn” and certainly not a “fuck.” I told him not too long ago that I had noticed his avoidance of the use of profanity. He smiled. When I asked him why he said, “Son, it’s the simple lack of a better vocabulary.” I think of the sheer will it has taken for him to remain true to his statement, and I realize a lifetime of civil language and expression is possible. Secondly, he said, “I didn’t want you kids growing up with a bad example.” As a result, I rarely find myself using profanity and feel as if I have failed in some way when I do. This is the result of a father’s leadership and a strong family. Therefore, never underestimate the two’s importance in shaping society. I hate the crude word “fuck.” It has become so common among almost all people in almost all settings. It has become a filler word and certainly lost whatever impact it ever had, if any. However, it serves as an example of a profane word becoming simply the lack of a better vocabulary and laziness in expressing oneself. We can do better.
I find people are more likely to listen to me when I express my opinions in dignified speech. I have developed notable skill in expressing passion and contempt without leaving the realm of family-friendly language, and without exaggerating points.
Observe: “Whatever virtues Donald Trump may claim to have, the vast majority of the time he manages to obscure and overshadow them by behaving as an odious cur. He thinks neither on what he is about to say nor on what he has already said.”
There is an art to shifting one’s tone between sympathetic and scornful. When you do it right, people know that you’re not biased against them. You want to be on their side, and it’s their fault for alienating you by making bad choices.
It’s amazing how effectively one can make people reflect on their assumptions by repeating their thought processes step by step and highlighting the dubious turns they made without realizing it.
For example: “So, if I understand correctly, you want people to consider that their ideas might be mistaken or unethical, or you think they’re being willfully unethical and you want them to care more about others, and to achieve this end you express outrage through vulgar insults? Has that ever worked on you?”
It doesn’t require a large vocabulary; only the substitution of genuine insight for volume. (Granted, that might be more difficult for humans to achieve than a large vocabulary, but it’s also more worth the time to develop.)
I think people will start using civil language when they realize it’s better for being taken seriously. They’ll start recognizing its greater potential for quality humor as well. I’ll be showing people how it’s done.
Bingo EC with kudos to junkmailfolder
Extradimensional Cephalopod wrote, “I have developed notable skill in expressing passion and contempt without leaving the realm of family-friendly language, and without exaggerating points.”
You just perched yourself upon the precarious pinnacle of rhetorical virtue.
Like I wrote below, “I respect the pebble in the pond choice even when the pebble is being dropped in a body of water that’s currently undergoing hurricane force winds.”
OBSERVATION
I’ve read your comments promoting your skills in what you’ve called your deconstruction method of argumentation over and over again in these threads but to this day “I” haven’t personally observed you actually demonstrating your superior skills in dealing with trolls or cultish ideologues. You come across as if you believe that your deconstruction method of argumentation is superior to the rhetorical methods used by your fellow commenters around Ethics Alarms but you haven’t demonstrated this method to us thus proving that your rhetorical method is superior and works in online environment comment threads in dealing with narrow minded internet trolls and very closed minded cultish ideologues.
I’ve stated a number of times in Ethics Alarms threads that I truly think your deconstruction method would be effective in a controlled clinical environment of some kind where you’re basically one-on-one with someone for an extended period of time but in an online discussion community this method is not going to be any more effective than methods used by your fellow commenters.
EC wrote, “I think people will start using civil language when they realize it’s better for being taken seriously. They’ll start recognizing its greater potential for quality humor as well. I’ll be showing people how it’s done.“ [Bold Emphasis Mine]
So you’ll be showing people how it’s done? Okay then, now it’s time to challenge you directly. Please provide me a link to an online comment thread, like Ethics Alarms, where you’ve personally used your deconstruction method of argumentation (make them comfortable, make them think, make them choose) to effectively deconstruct the opinions of narrow minded internet trolls or cultish closed minded ideologues and actually effectively changed their opinions.
You’ve been around Ethics Alarms for a long time, look at some of methods of argumentation I used when I first started participating at Ethics Alarms back in 2015 posting as Zoltar Speaks. Over the years some fellow commenters have used their version of a rhetorical hammer on me and I’ve learned from those just as much as I’ve learned from simple active participation with an open mind, and I personally think I’ve grown and I’ve gotten better. I’m, sure there are a few that can’t let go of the past and would disagree but that’s their problem, not mine. So, I’ve shown that I really am fully open to being shown how other methods of rhetorical argumentation can work better. I don’t want a text book, I want a real world example, show me how it’s done.
(Expressing passion and contempt without leaving the realm of family-friendly language, and without exaggerating points, is actually quite common depending on who you read.)
The demonstration of my point that most readily leaps to mind is a disagreement I had on Reddit regarding a book which, as it happens, is about a related topic. https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/11ej20f/the_reviews_are_in_for_whats_our_problem/jaeqweg/
The other person started out engaging in classic internet vitriol, and I steered the discussion in a constructive direction using my own methods.
Did I make the person like the book? No, but that wasn’t the point. The goal wasn’t to make them accept something they rejected. The goal was to figure out why they rejected it and what they wanted to see instead. I learned about some actual weaknesses of the book and how to address them, which I wouldn’t have recognized if I had assumed that the reason for the disagreement was somebody else’s character flaws. I earned the respect of the person I was talking to, by demonstrating I cared about understanding the problem as they saw it. That’s the prerequisite to making them care about them problem as I see it. Then we figure out something that solves both our problems.
I’m wondering if you see society as a dichotomy with bad-faith trolls and brainwashed cultists on one side and reasonable people on the other. Based on how you posed your challenge, it doesn’t seem like you recognize that most people in most human social situations are somewhere between those extreme states, and can move further towards either depending on how you interact with them. The way you express your disagreement can push them towards the closed-minded ideologue side or towards the reasonable, reflective side.
When you bring out the rhetorical hammer on people who disagree with you, most of them will leave the middle ground and start acting like cultists, and you may assume that’s what they always were. Do you blame the screw for not responding correctly to the hammer, or do you go get a screwdriver?
My method brings people towards the rational side. Frothing fanatics are not the target audience; they will benefit from the deconstruction method but they also usually need peer pressure and probably some therapy to reflect on their beliefs. The real impact is turning all those people from the middle ground into allies, because we’re willing to care about each other’s concerns and build solutions that address all of them. The example I posted shows the beginning of that process.
Like many people, I was born with a rhetorical hammer in my hand. That was my childhood. I use the deconstruction method because I find I get better results with it than I ever got with the hammer, faster and with less frustration. For me, it’s even more fun than the hammer ever was, because I learn things that help me come up with better ideas and bring out the best in others.
To modify a quote from Elwood P. Dowd: “In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I recommend… smart and pleasant.”
Extradimensional Cephalopod,
Thanks for the reply and the link to the discussion, I do appreciate it. You met the challenge and I think I get the general idea of your deconstruction method with one caveat, see conclusion below but don’t jump ahead.
Up front, I haven’t read the book that was being reviewed and my perception of tangled_girl’s initial comment…
…was that it was likely sarcasm directed at the catnap_kismet. If I’m misunderstanding the quote as emphasized then please correct me. Additionally, I don’t remember reading that quote in any context before I read tangled_girl’s comment so I have no reference point to understand the comment in any other way.
I read through the conversation with tangled_girl and I think I understand the parts where you followed your destruction method (made her comfortable, made her think and made her choose) and I think you did a good job in that respect; however, there was one thing struck me as being a bit out of character with your deconstruction process and that was your very first reply to tangled_girl where you wrote,
My perception of that comment is that it was a confrontational soft blow “ring her bell” rhetorical hammer. Based on tangled_girl’s reply…
…I think tangled_girl’s perception was likely the same, and her reply was very pointed to “ring your bell”, kind of a tit-for-tat reply. I’m guessing that was not your intended direction for the conversation and you did a good job of immediately redirecting it down a less confrontational path.
In my opinion, your statement above “I steered the discussion in a constructive direction using my own methods.” isn’t completely accurate for this particular conversation. Beginning the discussion with a soft blow “ring her bell” rhetorical hammer was a really effective way of getting tangled_girl into a more extended discussion where you did apply your destruction method.
Conclusion
Based on this particular discussion, I honestly think you can add to your deconstruction list;
1. Sometimes you might actually have to ring someone’s bell to open a dialogue.
2. Make them comfortable.
3. Make them think.
4. Make them choose.
Thanks, Steve!
The book is called “What’s Our Problem”, and I’m fairly certain that tangled_girl was agreeing with catnap_kismet and disagreeing with the book, and that the author she was referring to is the book’s author, Tim Urban.
You’re right, I could have started the discussion better by asking if the book as a whole seemed to contradict the book’s conclusion which called for self-examination.
Instead, I made a firm assertion to indicate that I considered her criticism to be misplaced, with a subtle implication that she may not have read the whole book. (Not that I would blame her, if she didn’t like most of it and didn’t want to waste time, but I didn’t make that clear.) It was better than a direct insult, but more confrontational than it should have been, and she responded with a (casual, low effort) hammer. Only when I started using the deconstruction method did the discussion become productive.
If I had gone in with the deconstruction method from the start, there wouldn’t have been anything to recover from. On the other hand, you raise a good point that sometimes a firm assertion can get people’s attention. I think the key is to make it clear that one is willing to reconsider one’s positions, through words or tone. In my experience, if a person is not already tired of a discussion they will engage in earnest if they know that they’re being taken seriously.
For this reason, I try to make a habit of either presenting an educated guess as to the person’s perspective and asking them for feedback on it, or presenting my own perspective in brief and asking them to point out the flaws they perceive in it. Showing an effort to learn is reliable at showing respect and saves time with figuring out people’s perspectives.
With what I learn, I can come up with better alternatives to offer people than the approaches they’re pushing, which alienate other people. People may feel my solutions are unrealistic, but would support the solutions if they came within reach. The more people acknowledge they feel that way, the closer the solutions become. The reasonable people out there don’t realize that they are, if not a majority, then numerous enough to take the future into their own hands. They just need to understand each other. Collaboration and trust will soon follow.
Extradimensional Cephalopod wrote, “I’m wondering if you see society as a dichotomy with bad-faith trolls and brainwashed cultists on one side and reasonable people on the other.”
In general, no, but society does seem to be heading directly into that kind of dangerous pigeon-holing division and denying it is not logical.
Pay close attention to how on both sides of the political aisle view each other, we’re on a very dangerous slippery slope.
I wrote, “Pay close attention to how on both sides of the political aisle view each other, we’re on a very dangerous slippery slope.”
This is how both sides of the political aisle seem to be viewing each other these days.
The 21st century “age of rage”, as Jonathan Turley puts it, is front and center in almost everything.
Politicians say that they’ll solve all of people’s problems if they get elected. Since they can’t do that, they need an excuse. They pick an outgroup and make them the scapegoat. Play two sides against each other and you can keep the game going for decades while accomplishing nothing constructive. I’m here to end the game, by giving people the ability to visualize something better than what’s being sold to them, something they can build for themselves together. All you need to kill an idea is a better idea.
I’d like to expand on this a little bit.
Extradimensional Cephalopod wrote, “Politicians say that they’ll solve all of people’s problems if they get elected. Since they can’t do that, they need an excuse. They pick an outgroup and make them the scapegoat. Play two sides against each other and you can keep the game going for decades while accomplishing nothing constructive.”
That’s playing the we the people against the politicians card.
It’s really easy to blame politicians and politicians are certainly part of the problem but what’s happening in the 21st century is certainly not just politicians, it’s the majority of the media, the dominant bureaucracy, corporate leadership, academia, activists and a wide swath of the population that has swallowed a massive lean away from liberty towards totalitarianism and pitting groups against each other is part of that division. The rhetoric from this section of society is not the problem, free speech, it’s the anti-Americans putting their totalitarian leaning rhetoric into action to intentionally chip away at our freedoms and liberties that have been the status quo.
Extradimensional Cephalopod wrote, “All you need to kill an idea is a better idea.”
As you know, that’s only part of it; you also need a persuasive means to present that idea far and wide.
Based on 21st century observation, All you need to kill an idea (American exceptionalism, freedom, Liberty, Constitutionalism) is to use their Pravda-USA like propaganda machine and direct intimidation to indoctrinate the population into believing that everything about the United States is evil the only fix is squashing the status quo and the masses will fall into submission.
In a nut shell; the difference between the left and the right in the 21st century is, the left is trying to obliterate the status quo at the cost of freedom, liberty and the constitution and the right simply wants to stop the left and maintain the status quo.
The left does not have a “better idea” they are just anti status quo.
I types this quickly on my way out the door to visit grandchildren on Christmas morning.
Merry Christmas everyone.