Of Guns and Civility

A preface: I don’t know any of the details of what is upsetting some members of this community lately, or leading some people to declare their intent to leave.  I don’t particularly care either.  This is not a statement about any of the reasons why any individual here is upset with any other individual here.  No one has asked me my opinion of those disputes, and I have no particular feelings about any of them.  This is about the relevance of civility to political discourse in general.

One thing that I try to make clear, when discussing politics with anyone, is that at the heart of any political idea is violence.  This notion is made clear by American history itself.  A ten cent increase of the tax on tea carries with it an implication that those who attempt to evade paying the increased tax can be attacked with violence by agents of the state.  Should the evader survive that attack, they will be incarcerated for a period of time in a penitentiary where they risk violence by other agents of the state, not to mention rape and murder by sharpened toothbrush from other inmates.

Every political notion we speak of here carries with it the same implied threat and justification of the accompanying violence.  You want to increase someone’s taxes?  Well, you are threatening them with violence if they don’t pay.  You want to have affirmative action?  Well, you are threatening anyone who doesn’t comply with violence.  Behind every government action, waiting in the wings, are the men with the guns.

In light of this, I find the calls for strict civility in political forums to be somewhat absurd.  Nearly every single thing we talk about is accompanied by an implied threat of violence against those who disagree with us, should our ideas be implemented.  Most of us ignore that aspect most of the time.  But I try to make it clear whenever I write to people about politics.

This doesn’t make us bad people.  Some people need to be threatened with violence, to stop them from hurting others.  That is important, and valid.  But to suggest that we should feel overly bad about hurting feelings when speaking of how to apply violence to others in the name of political reform strikes me as absurd.  It is ignorant of the massive responsibility and moral weight we take upon ourselves when we chose to be political actors in a free and democratic society.

The stakes are really that high.  People will be killed because of what we talk about here.  Others will be dragged off in chains.  You should not be able to be civil about that all the time.  You should not have to be nice, or require that others be nice to you for you to care about that and concerned about that.  If you think that whether or not someone else is an asshole or a hypocrite is anything close to as important as who will be feeling the bootheel of government on their neck, then you need to reevaluate your values.  The conversation cannot hold the ideas of “stress positions” and “civility” at the same time.

What do you really want to talk about?