Tobias column: Tuning out cruel speech 'Etiquette for This November'

In 1922, more than a hundred years ago, Emily Post published this bon mot in the first edition of “Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home”: “Good manners reflect something from inside — an innate sense of consideration for others and respect for self.”

The 19th edition was printed in 2017, and has been updated to include advice on contemporary manners, including concerns about diversity and mobile technology. But there are still pages on timeless matters, like the necessary writing of thank you notes, the art of gentle conversation, and the showing of kindness to those in grief and mourning.

I’d like to add a chapter to her book: “Etiquette for This November” (and all the months leading up to the presidential election). She’s dealt with the general topic of courteous speech in previous editions. But the partisan atmosphere has become so viral and vile that there ought to be a chapter that deals with manners in political speech explicitly.

I’m concerned about the nastiness of the upcoming election. No, I’ll be honest. I’m worried, especially in the anxiety hour of 4:30 in the morning. Friendships have been torn apart by arguments over politics. So have families. So have churches.

I’ve witnessed a horrible correlation take place all too many times: the longer a person embraces an extreme partisan position, the more that person’s character changes, and not for the better. There are people I’ve known years ago who were the picture of cool rationality and gentle courtesy. Now they’re ever yelling at volume 10, engage in personal ad hominem insult, and resort to infantile name-calling. People who once talked like my Sunday School teacher, not even saying “heck” or “darn,” now sound like they took speech therapy from Eric Cartman in “South Park.”

“The tongue is a fire,” St. James says in the third chapter of his epistle. “The tongue is an unrighteous world among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the cycle of nature, and set on fire by hell.”

Strong words, and scary. But spot on. Bad things happen when we speak badly. If violence and anger possess my speech, then my behavior is always going to follow suit. That’s the history of the world. That’s an iron rule of psychology.

That’s true in all speech, but it’s particularly true in political speech. It is frighteningly real for this presidential election.

In a recent study, Pew Research observed that the hostility between political parties has erupted in recent decades, with each side believing the other is more “immoral, dishonest and close-minded” than other Americans. Political scientists and sociologists have a special word for this hostility. They call it “polarization,” and it is deadly.

It is bad manners and patently un-American to claim that a member of the “other” party is anything less than American. It is patently un-Christian, even immoral, to say that a Democrat or a Republican cannot be a Christian (though, tragically, words to that effect virulently pollute the internet and cable news).

I wish I could dismiss mean political speech as mere stuff, as only behavior that is boorish, prurient, and Neanderthal. I wish I could tell you, in the face of partisan name-calling and scapegoating, to “just ignore it and it will go away.”

But I can’t. History won’t let me. Polarization must tend toward alienation, then de-humanization. Mutual hostility becomes, inexorably, mutual destruction. A mean season of political cruelty, without exception, has always preceded the demonic monstrosities of the 20th century.

Recall that Hitler scapegoated the Jews, the Gypsies, and all those deemed “unfit” for a political reason. Stalin denounced and then persecuted the kulaks (i.e., family farmers) because they stood in the way of his program of centralized agriculture (thereby starving to death millions of Ukrainians). Mao Zedong, before he massacred 40 to 80 million Chinese, first dehumanized his victims in his rhetoric as Western “counter-revolutionaries.”

Need I go on?

“The tongue (of tyrants, especially) is a fire, and sets on fire the whole world,” as St. James said, and millions suffer and die. Holocaust has always started in political speech. Death and destruction are unfailingly ignited by the tongue.

Someone will surely say that in America, we should be free to say what we want, and political speech should be a rough and ready free for all.

And I say to that, along with Emily Post (and God), that no one has the right to be evil and cruel.

I also say that behavior will always follow speech. If a politician speaks cruelly, he will certainly govern cruelly. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that “political parties are constantly deceived because they always only think of the pleasure they themselves derive from the speech of their great orator, and never of the dangerous excitement he arouses in their opponents.”

And worse: the “dangerous excitement” the politician who speaks cruelly arouses in his followers. The peril here, in these anti-etiquette days, is that partisans are willing to transgress any boundary of moral civility, willing to topple any institution that stands in the way of their agenda. “A party which is not afraid,” wrote Jakob Burckhardt, “of letting culture, business, and welfare go to ruin completely can be omnipotent for a while.”

And just a short “while” will be too long.

I’m going to say something radical here, and probably naïve and Pollyannaish: It’s high time, and later than you think, for politicians to practice good manners, even and especially in their speech. It is time for community and cultural and religious leaders to demand this in partisan electioneering. It is time for you and I to expect good manners from podcasters and political hacks, from speakers on weekdays and Sunday mornings, and from cable news hosts.

If they snigger and demean, if they start scapegoating and yelling, then change the channel, walk out, cancel subscriptions, read the Sermon on the Mount … and pick up a copy of Emily Post.