Our age of incivility must end

In the summer of 2020, protestors — and criminals — installed a reign of disorder in many American cities. On the news and on social media, one could see videos of arson in Minneapolis, mass looting in Manhattan and Los Angeles, blocked highways in Texas, and protests in Washington, DC, in which crowds of activists harassed and intimidated restaurant patrons. These actions, though alarming to many Americans, were met with nuanced sympathy and outright endorsement in venues of polite liberal opinion such as the New York Times, the Nation, and National Public Radio.

Watching the mainstream accept, or even welcome, such incivility, in defiance of public health directives that had banned even the smallest of public gatherings, was a dizzying experience. After months in which Americans had been cajoled and sometimes ordered into staying isolated and indoors, the script had suddenly changed.

It changed yet again after January 6, 2021, when “riot” no longer meant an eloquent expression of the “language of the unheard”, something to be championed or at least sympathetically understood, but a despicable betrayal of the nation, akin to treason or terrorism. For the establishment, norms around civility seemed to matter only as a weapon against the Right.

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