The Art of Civility

This has been one of those weeks when I think maybe the right thing to do is to become a hermit in the mountains. After this past week I must sit back and wonder what has happened to our society, how we got here and where we are going. OK, so maybe I am being just a little over dramatic, but I really am starting to wonder about this world we live in.

Last weekend I was at the Kansas State Fair. I love the State Fair and I have been to enough other states to say that they are all very similar and always a good time. I will say that I have often made the observation that I attend the Fair every year to feel better about my place in the gene pool. If you enjoy people watching, and I do, it is a great event.

However, there are instances when we see more unseemly parts of our society and that was the case last weekend. We are in the middle of a tightly contested Governor’s race and it serves as a microcosm of what is wrong with our world today. We have five candidates, one each from the major parties, two independents and a libertarian. Last weekend a debate was held between the three candidates who have the best chance of winning and that is where my doubts about the society we live in were brought to light.

I attended this debate because I honestly have no idea of which candidate I will vote for and I want to gather as much information about the candidates as I can. I am really and truly interested where they stand on issues and not simply which party they are affiliated with or how great a sound bite they can come up with. I was interested to see each candidate head to head in the same place, or at least I thought I was.

To set the stage, literally, the three major candidates were up on stage each behind a podium. The two candidates deemed not to have a chance were not given time on the stage but instead had taken up residency on either side of the stage holding up their campaign signs. As an interesting side not, one candidate’s sign had a picture of a marijuana leaf on, that was something I had never seen before.

Each candidate on stage had a section of supporters in matching t-shirts who were there to either support their candidate or mock the other two.  The crowd was loud and rowdy many were waving signs and making noise. I applaud anyone who gets behind a candidate and becomes involved, well, I applaud them to a point.

Every time one of the candidates would attempt to answer a question they would be subject to yells and jeers from the supporters of the other two. This happened to the point that it was hard to hear what the candidate had to say. Remember I came because I wanted to get a better feeling of where the candidates stood so the yelling and jeering were quite annoying to me. To make it worse, the candidates themselves stoked the fires even more with the way they answered the questions. That was when the reporter asked me my opinion.

The question posed to me was; “What was your takeaway from the debate today?” My answer was that I was concerned about the lack of civility and the inability to have an actual debate about the issues. I went on to say that some of us had not made up our minds and the crowd made it hard for us to hear the answers to the question and that was disappointing.

When did we, as a society, break down to the point that we cannot have a civil discussion of the issues of the day? Why can we not simply lay out our ideas and opinions without the need to shout our opponent down and belittle them? Supporters of a candidate should have enough civility to cheer their candidate without resorting to booing, yelling or cat calling the opponent. In short, we all need to grow up and act like adults.

I don’t know why I am surprised, its nothing new, we saw it in the last Presidential race and we have even seen it in town hall meetings and coffees held by elected officials. It appears we have it in our heads that the only way to get our point across is to make a scene, belittle the person we don’t agree with and yell at them when they try to answer.

What’s the answer? We need to return some decorum back into our society. We need to learn how to disagree without being disagreeable. How does that happen? It starts with each of us at a personal level. We need to share ideas and debate them without trying to force our opinion on others. We need to be able to allow people to look at issues and make their own minds up based on the merits of the ideas or candidates. Then we need to demand that from our candidates. A candidate running a campaign of thoughtfulness and civility, now there’s an idea.