Incivility: effective because we like it

Whether or not something is legitimately bad for the body, or just socially unacceptable, it makes little to no difference   that taboo leads to indulgence. And with election season underway, many Americans may be asking themselves: what are the biggest issues that we currently face as a nation? With unemployment over 8 percent, tensions with Iran over nuclear weapons ever-taught, and national debt in the tens of trillions, it is easy to overlook one of the largest indulgences of the American people in decades: incivility.

Incivility is “like carbohydrates; it’s hard to say no.” So said Professor Roderick “Rod” Hart, dean of the College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin, a panel on civility Wednesday. Incivility, or being rude and vulgar, is incredibly attractive in this day and age – especially to many political candidates and their “surrogate” Super-PAC’s. If the average U.S. citizen hasn’t seen an attack advertisement on television, the Internet or in their mailbox, they’ve either been living in the woods or are completely inattentive to politics. 

In the case of political discourse, incivility – namely in the form of negative advertisements – is widely practiced because it works. As Mr. Hart described, humans are very binary creatures, meaning they like opposites for the reason that they clash (like black and white, or ones and zeros). As such, they have an animalistic preference for incivility over civility: they would much rather watch Congressmen fight over nothing than agree about  nothing. 

President Susan Herbst, expert of civility in American political discourse, served as a panelist at the second event in this year’s Metanoia series on civility.  She commented on the decline of American civility over time, noting that a U.S. Senator recently told her that “no one talks outside the Senate anymore,” a stark contrast from the sociable senators of old. Herbst also recalled an ex-governor-turned-President who was shaken to find how little civility was exercised in Congress after having easily mediated disagreements in the Texas legislature.

Unfortunately, he isn’t alone in this sentiment: public opinions expert and panelist Brad Honan remarked that “71 percent of Americans believe that civility has declined” in the United States in recent years, with almost a quarter (23 percent) of those polled affirming that they had actually quit a job due to incivility in the workplace. Unfortunately, the United States has gone from a country where showing Franklin D. Roosevelt in a wheelchair would have “threatened the dignity of his office” to one where Barack Obama is called “un-American” by a governor, and a “Muslim socialist” by others.

Christina de Vecchis, 3rd-semester pre-education history major, hopes she can help eradicate incivility in American political culture as a high school teacher by stressing the practice of civility “whether you’re in the oval office or a school lunchroom.” As for the panelists, Rod Hart ended his speech by describing incivility as “eating away at political structure,” declaring the suppression of incivility a “patriotic duty.” Incivility is a language, and as Metanoia 2012 aims to express, it is best not to speak it.