I believe civility in political discourse is only effective when all parties possess a baseline of shame or empathy. When one side is shameless or openly manipulative, calls for “civility” become a trap—forcing good-faith actors to play fair while bad-faith actors exploit the system.
We are often told to “be civil,” “stay calm,” or “take the high road.” But in an environment where political opponents use lies, fearmongering, and deliberate provocations, I see civility as increasingly toothless—something weaponized to silence opposition rather than encourage honest dialogue.
I am not advocating for violence or unhinged rage, but I do believe that excessive politeness in the face of bad faith becomes complicity. Civility has its place—but only when mutual respect for truth and justice exists.
I am open to being challenged here. When dealing with those who exploit it, is there still a place for civility in politics? Can radical honesty or assertiveness be just as damaging? Should civility be an unconditional principle or a conditional one based on context?
🔗 Read the full piece here: The Silence of Defeat: When Civility Becomes Capitulation
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Democracy is about winning elections. It’s important to understand voters. Regarding “It is not uncivil to call authoritarianism what it is. It is not rude to fight voter suppression with every legal tool available”: if this is your core political message, you are not targeting a majority of actual voters. Voters do not care about these things: https://x.com/davidshor/status/1782503475705774495 Most voters do not have a college degree, and a politics that wins elections means primarily talking about things that matter to them. AOC won her district by less than Kamala won that district. After you win, then you can enact change, like the electoral count reform act of 2022. If you are charismatic, you can try to convince people (Obama was a generational talent at this), but even he engaged in pragmatism like racial respectability politics. Campaigning and governing are different. Obama’s campaigning on racial respectability politics did not affect his governing in any way, but it still helped him win and provide stronger coattails to down ballot Democratic candidates
Look, I’m a Lefty from New Zealand. And I’ll say with no shred of shame that I hate the US political circus and what it’s doing to global discourse. But you’re intensely naive to think manipulation and a lack of shame are one sided problems. The political left in the US is yes, much, much better at decorum and by far the lesser of two evils – But they also gaslight like crazy, do a terrible job at denouncing extremists on the left and play identity politics as a contentious subject uncomfortably often.
That decorum is in my humble opinion, sorely needed and being able to provide it makes you a lot more favorable as a ‘faction’. Work on having difficult conversations, tell the truth and be earnest. I can’t even begin to expect that from your other half right now so you’re the only hope.
The MAGAs are skilled at weaponizing our virtues against us. Belief in free speech, a sense of fairness, honesty, honor, support for rule of law all can become weaknesses in the face of fascism.
Fascism’s opponents shouldn’t blindly copy their opponents, but they sure as hell need to stop bringing Roberts Rules to a knife fight.
1.5. If you can be nice when you don’t want to be nice, you can probably deescalate the situation.
If you are violating the law, expect them to violate the law.
If you go violent, expect them to find your friend, relative, grandmother and do something horrific.
OF course, I am getting to the point where I want a flame thrower. They want to throw down with a gun…. no one wants to be burned alive.
This is essentially the tolerance paradox . Intolerant people will demand you tolerate their intolerant ideologies, or else claim you’re not actually being tolerant. In doing so, we risk the intolerant exploiting society to destroy the tolerance for the people they are intolerant of through oppression. Because they never claimed to be tolerant, they don’t have to be.
Thus, you can not be tolerant of intolerant ideologies even if you are otherwise tolerant.
I have a T-shirt that reads “You don’t have to be nice to people who think you don’t have any rights” and that sums up my thinking on subject.
Now, I also don’t believe that you get to be an asshole unless it’s absolutely necessary but the concept of “they go low and we high” in deeply flawed in my never humble opinion.