Yesterday I was called a feminazi by a Boston cab driver. How little it takes to become the enemy of Republicans - in this case part of the female axis of evil.
I entered the cab to hear Rush Limbaugh's radio carping about being criticized for his castigations of Michael J. Fox. "He's one of those Hollywood liberals who'll say anything," the driver said irritated. "You don't believe he has Parkinson's," I asked. "No," he replied. I looked over at my octogenarian friend. She was smiling, shaking her head in disbelief - more because of all the cabs in Boston, we got this one. "You think he's faking?" I continued. "Yep. That's what they do. And now they're attacking Limbaugh. This country is about free speech." I waited, not wanting to go to war with the guy - not feeling he deserved any of the delicious retorts whipping about in my mind. I restrained. "Well, that's why they're criticizing him. They have the right," I replied evenly. "Just as you said." A pause. "Okay," he said. "You're right there." My turn: "And, let's go with your thinking. Even if Fox wasn't on his full meds, wouldn't that allow people to see the ravages of the disease that as yet can't be cured - the real disease, not one disguised by medication? Some of the shaking that not all PD people have can be tempered, but the disease conspiratorily rages on. It has a lot of non-shaking (nonmotor) aspects, too, and no medication as yet can keep those from taking a horrendous toll." He waited seemingly trying to figure out his passengers. I pointed to our stop. He turned to look directly at us. He was smirking. It was vaguely familiar. If he let us go now, he might lose. And winning to some, as we've learned, is everything. "But, then there are feminazis," he said, launching the naturally irrelevant final salvo. "I love that term," he choked with evident delight and self-congratulations." We smiled. "You have a nice day," I said exiting the cab, leaving him to his delusions. "Feminazis," he called still laughing, "I just love that term."
I could have unleashed any number of retorts whizzing about in my head, but we'd made our point. He'd stooped to incivility, only to convince himself he'd won. And why go there? The battle was not worth the self-betrayal. He was an angry, diehard, dogmatist and driving six more times around the block wouldn't have made a dent in his antipathy for passengers not to his political liking trying to get to an art store without a fight.
I couldn't help but wonder, though, how a guy working as hard as he does each day to make ends meet convinces himself that the Republicans are his people. The answer that seemed most reasonable is a shared incivility - the kind he'd demonstrated. That's what he likes about Limbaugh; that's what he likes about George W. Bush. They certainly have that deep-seated nastiness in common - a deep disdain for those who aren't their own.
It made me wonder, too, how intensely the incivility card will be played before the next election. And will the Democrats be ready this time?
Even in Rhode Island where Lincoln Chaffee is generally considered a "nice guy," a photo of his Democratic opponent Sheldon Whitehouse standing with a former convicted governor made the front page of The Providence Journal. The assumption we're supposed to make - If your photo is taken with a criminal, you must be one. Only toward the end of the article do you get to read Whitehouse's reasoned response. And how many people read that far? If I were the Republicans I'd be rushing to remove a lot of framed photos from my office if that's the game we're now playing.
The anti-Democrat plan now, short of some awful situation that frightens otherwise thinking Americans back into their cages of reactive, status quo voting habits, is to lower campaigns to where the leading Republicans excel. These are people who took the career of a man who might have one day been President of the United States, a General, a minority, who had given his country so much and sacrificed him for their own ends. These are people who have duped so many and will do it again, who label as "evil" those with whom they are incapable of negotiating due to their own intellectual and moral incapacity and turn into a horrible war for their own economic and historical ends that which might have been turned into peaceful co-existence. And, these are people who'll attack anyone to validate their power in the achievement of hollow victories.
Unlike our cab driver, they deserve our strongest response. These are people, a rare group, for which we must suspend, momentarily at least, some of the sacrifices of civility that we should all make in order to live together. These are the people who defensively call for civility even as they mangle the respect and regard that are its hallmarks. They hide behind the Coulters of this world, commandeer media outlets, and generate hatred. They have created a national civility crisis and only by taking away the poison of their undeserved power can this country hope to retrieve the foundation they've so soundly and gratuitously shaken.
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