Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Why the sudden urge for civility

All over the teevee, newsbunnies and talking heads and "serious people" are talking about the "shock, horror" level of discourse in society of late.

They want us little people to be more civil, more thoughtful. We only say such mean angry things because technology lets us publish without a time out to consider our words.

I have only one thing to say to that.

Fuck off you overpaid wankers.

We yell and scream, fight and insult because we are justifiably pissed off. Our country is fucked. Our economy is fucked. Our political system is fucked. And instead of doing the hard work of making it better, you all are sitting on your fucking hands whinging about how mad us little people are. Anyone doing any kind of anti-ism work will recognize your calls for civility as the meta version of "if you were only less shrill/angry/loud then people might pay more attention to you".

The problem with our country is not the level of civility. The problem is that the 20 percent at the top, (which includes every single person who makes it on those teevee news shows) have robbed those of us at the bottom of the basic resources we need to live. We won't be quiet about that. Uncivil words are the least of your problems.

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