Pearl River As we move away from democratic traditions in the United States and closer to governments taking turns at one-party, nearly unilateral governance, another pretense maintained in Washington seems headed now for the dustbin of history as well, and that’s basic civility, manners, respect, or whatever term fits best. Anyone who has ever watched the “question period” in the British Parliament from this side of the Atlantic is often surprised at the rough talk and insults. In Trump II, the administration has anted up and done one better.
None of this is particularly surprising for Trump himself, although he’s taken it all to a different, subterranean level now. Where in the past he would invent deprecatory nicknames for opponents, now he’ll accuse people of treason, threaten the death penalty, and when it comes to women and reporters go scabrously low with insults and misogyny. Frankly, we’re almost inured to his bad behavior. That’s just Trump being Trump. It washes off of us like water off a duck’s back.
In the mouths of Kristi Noem, his Homeland Security person, or Karoline Leavitt, his current press secretary, the insults and accusations just seem hateful and contemptuous. The same for Hegseth at Defense. It doesn’t work. This isn’t South Dakota, where you can shoot dogs and walk away, some Florida alligator wrestling match, or Fox News. There might be some of the base that eats this stuff up, but when you have any kind of conversation with MAGA folks among your family, neighbors, friends, and even members, and ask them what they think of the vile rudeness spewing out of these folks and others, you can see their eyes roll, their mouths tightening, and feel their embarrassment. I can’t help thinking of my dear departed Mississippi delta raised mother and what she would say to my father as they religiously watched the evening news habitually. She would be horrified at some of these clips. My brother and I often couldn’t help but quietly laugh when she would start a response referring to someone similar as “insipid,” which was about as extreme as her breeding would allow.
It’s a mystery with such a narrow margin in the houses of Congress, how the more seasoned hands in the administration think that this kind of behavior, more common in a barroom or high school cafeteria, serves their interests? Over the years, I’ve done a lot of negotiating, whether collective bargaining or for settlements with corporations over organizing campaigns. There’s no love loss. Many would just as soon push me in front of a car on the highway, but in the main on both sides there is restraint, because all parties know personal feelings can’t get in the way of organizational interests. We shake hands. We bite our tongues. We do business.
In Congress, some still say “the honorable” when addressing a colleague across the aisle, even if the administration is sitting before their committees, reprising their memories of insult comics, like Don Rickles. There are signs this rough stuff is eroding Trump’s majority. Twenty Republicans crossed the aisle in the House to vote to cancel Trump’s executive order against collective bargaining for federal workers. The Senate will likely trash that, but these are folks voting in a favor of ways to make a deal, rather than vilify the workers.
What Noem, Hegseth, Leavitt, and their like don’t seem to realize is that even with Trump applauding in the background, their jobs have an expiration date, but their toxicity is permanent. What goes around, comes around, leaving them no way to plead that they were insane or drunk at the time they shouldered major weight for the government in what we once claimed was the land of the free and home of the brave, but seems represented by midgets in suits and glam makeup.