Hey, remember civility?

I remember when liberals were pushing civility in public discourse. I made the tag "civility bullshit" for this topic right away, because I knew it was bullshit, and this morning it seems that everywhere I look on the web, I'm seeing inflammatory rhetoric from liberals. Here are 3 things I happened to see first thing today:

1. "Right-wing nutjobs’ last stand: The debt limit endgame arrives/As the debt limit deadline approaches, conservatives are trotting out the real nonsense. The fantasy is almost over." That's a headline at Salon for an article by Brian Beutler. Apparently, at Salon, they think news analysis is just fine when it calls leaders in the political party they disapprove of "right-wing nutjobs." Does Beutler deserve that presentation? I don't know. Maybe Salon is just fighting for clicks in this crazy world.

2. And here's President Obama, the man who lectured us about civil discourse after the Tucson massacre, talking about the shutdown/debt ceiling problem, and he's using crime as a metaphor: "Think about it this way... The American people do not get to demand a ransom for doing their jobs." Why should we think about it that way? We're supposed to see the Republicans as kidnapping... I don't know... somebody. The Republicans are elected members of Congress, which makes the decisions about spending. They're having a hell of a time getting through this decision, but what makes it crime-like? The comments at that link, which goes to the NYT, pick up the President's cue. One comment — a NYT pick, highly rated by readers —  begins: "President Obama is right. He should not be forced to negotiate with a rope around his neck." Suddenly, the metaphor is lynching.

3. "Will the Supreme Court Allow the Richest Donors to Corrupt American Politics Even More?" That's a front-page teaser at Slate leading to "Poor Little Rich Guys/The Supreme Court clamors to protect the right of Richie Rich, Scrooge McDuck, and the Koch brothers to further corrupt American politics." The article is by Dahlia Lithwick, who's been describing Supreme Court oral arguments for years. She's reporting on yesterday's argument in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, which is a challenge to the limit on how much a person can donate to various candidates. It's not about how much you can give to any single candidate, just the ceiling on total contributions, when you're spreading money around to many candidates. (The limit is $48,600 every 2 years.) Richie Rich? Scrooge McDuck? Will Slate allow the stupidest bullshit to erode American minds even more?

You know who's also rich? In addition to those characters from comic books that Baby Boomers read when they were children? The owners of the Washington Post and the New York Times. How about a law that puts a ceiling on how much they are allowed to spend putting out their political speech? Poor little rich guys. Boo hoo. Who cares? Fuck them, she said, sarcastically.

"I used to believe that public school open houses required little more than the obligatory clean shirt with buttons and a swipe of lip gloss."

Says Dahlia Lithwick in a piece titled "Parents Left Behind: How public school reforms are turning American parents into dummies."

That made me wonder: Did I miss a memo about buttons?

I get "clean," and obviously one's upper body must be clothed, but is there a thing about buttons? Do buttons mean something?!

"Antoinette Tuff Had Empathy for the Georgia School Gunman. We Can Learn a Lot From Her."

Writes Dahlia Lithwick.

In her first interview after the standoff, Tuff mentions that in the initial terrible moments she thought about a sermon series on “anchoring” that her pastor had been preaching, and it helped her to see that Hill was bereaved and in pain, and she was praying for him. I don’t know anything about anchoring, but I know I want to learn. Tuff’s compassion and her ability to see herself in her assailant (and him in her) might be as useful a way to think about school violence as any other I’ve seen. In the course of a few days, Tuff proved that the national debate doesn’t have to be about “bad” guys and “tough” guys (or even just “guys” at all). This doesn’t have to be about lose-lose split-second decisions or the simplification of complicated situations for political gain. She shows that this debate is about ongoing, years-in-the-making problems: isolation and loneliness, medical failures, depression, and the allure of being a copycat in a culture that celebrates violence. She shows that polarizing debates about bad guys and good guys in the heat of battle are both fatuous and pointless.

Much more here, with details about the hour-long interview Anderson Cooper did with Tuff last night. I highly recommend that. You'll see that Tuff is very strongly grounded in religion — more than Lithwick seems to want to talk about. I don't think religion is essential to developing the kind of skill that Tuff displayed, but it is most certainly Tuff's own understanding of why she was able to do what she did, as she continually returned to statements like "God gives us a purpose in life" and "God has a way of showing you what's really in you."