Trump’s vulgarity fast becoming signature across so much of our politics

HALIFAX—How did gross incivility take over so much of the public square in both Canada and the United States? There is probably a good PhD thesis in the answer to that question. But the disintegration of the political middle begins and perhaps ends with something we all share: the language. Language is the basis of how societies mediate differences of opinion. The give and take of sweet reason that produces compromise comes in words. Language is the foundation of diplomacy, that, to paraphrase the late British prime minister Winston Churchill, substitutes words, words, words for war, war, war. Words are the magic ingredients of books that give delight and breathe life into culture. In the hands of masters like Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Timothy Findley, and Farley Mowat, they offer glimpses into worlds we would otherwise never see. But these days it is not the language of reason or culture that dominates the national conversation. Everywhere you turn, you hear the angry, implacable, language of intolerance. That matters. The degradation of language is the degradation of society. During the “Freedom Convoy,” Canadians got a good look at the new vulgarity that is fast becoming the signature across so much of our politics. It is one thing to protest a particular government policy. That is a treasured right in any democracy. But carrying “Fuck Trudeau” signs has nothing to do with airing grievances. It is about promoting hate. Gumming up the national capital for three weeks, upending the lives of thousands of people in the process, is not protest. It is pandemonium. And when a national political leader takes doughnuts to the very people who wanted to change the government without the bother of an election, it endorses and reinforces the politics of confrontation and intimidation. It guarantees more “Fuck Trudeau” signs, more gravel-throwing, and who knows what else. Nor did Pierre Poilievre enhance his image as a statesman when he recently called the prime minister “wacko." That language got him tossed out of the House of Commons, and forced a later apology. “Wacko”, by the way, is one of Donald Trump’s favourite pejoratives when he attacks his opponents. Just name-calling you say? Childish, but no big deal? Think again. A case in point. Trump and the GOP’s merciless verbal abuse of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a deranged, hammer-wielding, Pelosi-hater into the politician’s San Francisco home. When the attacker found out that the former Speaker was in Washington, D.C., he fractured the skull of Pelosi’s husband of 60 years, Paul Pelosi. Intolerance, with violent overtones, has shown up in the strangest of places: American libraries. Language is at the centre of this unlikely development. It began with a very old story—the effort by some to segregate or remove books with “offensive” or “obscene” content from public libraries. That means anything dealing with sex or gender issues. Viewing culture through that horrible moral squint is what got To Kill a Mockingbird pulled from the curriculum by a British Columbia school board. As the saying goes: great books read you, you don’t read them. But in the U.S., this effort to dry clean literature, to have the few decide what the many can read, has gone much further. Librarians from across the country told ABC news that they are facing physical threats, lawsuits, and criminal charges for having “inappropriate” books on the shelves. Last year, 3,000 books were banned in the U.S. “We had people threatening to burn down our building,” librarian Maegan Hanson said in an interview. The librarians think that the threats will only get worse now that Idaho Governor Brad Little has signed library content restrictions into law. The intolerance is increasingly becoming official. There are two fundamental requirements for the rise of fascism: the normalization of violent political language, and the existence of figures who can be scapegoated for all the troubles citizens face. Donald Trump has set the stage for a radical change in U.S. democracy by making abusive language and hateful speech acceptable at the highest levels of American politics. Sadly, he has several imitators. Consider just a part of the catalogue of his violent public statements that have now become “normal”: Grabbing women by their genitals; calling his political opponents “vermin”; characterizing the press as “enemies of the people”; denouncing immigrants as “drug-dealers” and “rapists”; traducing a judge for being of “Mexican” heritage; telling immigrants to “go back where you came from”; describing the current president of the United States as a “moron”; and calling Canada’s prime minister a “left-wing lunatic.” Not so long ago, any politician who used that language would be out of business. But over the eight years he has been on the political scene, Trump has so desensitized his audience with his routine exhibitions of racism and bigotry that his outrageous words seem not to register. How bad is it? Just last week, Trump posted on his website that the country needed a “unified Reich.” Although the post was blamed on an underling, the unmistakable language of Nazi fascism remained up for hours. As Georgia Republican Geoff Duncan told CNN, the normal thing to have done in the circumstances was to fire the staffer, and disavow the post personally and publicly. Duncan noted that neither of those things has happened. Perhaps Trump’s greatest contribution to the toxic, partisan mud bath that politics has become is the ex-president’s industrial scale lying. Despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary, Trump continues to peddle the Big Lie that he really won the 2020 election. According to The Washington Post, in the one term Trump was president, he told 4,000 lies. It pays to remember that his big whopper that Joe Biden’s presidency is illegitimate, incited a mob to sack the U.S. Capitol, beat police, and go hunting for politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence to deal out some frontier justice. No one should be surprised that Canadian MPs like Pam Damoff, Charlie Angus, Carol Hughes, Rachel Blaney and others are leaving politics. It has become a toxic arena of threats, misogyny, and disrespectful dialogue. And it all begins, and perhaps ends, with the weaponizing and debasement of language. Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist. The Hill Times

Trump’s vulgarity fast becoming signature across so much of our politics

Donald Trump has set the stage for a radical change in U.S. democracy by making abusive language and hateful speech acceptable at the highest levels of American politics. Sadly, he has several imitators.

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Trump’s vulgarity fast becoming signature across so much of our politics

Donald Trump has set the stage for a radical change in U.S. democracy by making abusive language and hateful speech acceptable at the highest levels of American politics. Sadly, he has several imitators.

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