America's radical right poisoning of civil discourse and government

A 5 minute segment broadcast by local NPR (KPBS) yesterday focused on the explosion of incivility at San Diego County Board of Supervisors meetings. The rise of brutal incivility started about 1 year into the still-ongoing COVID pandemic. Some people seem to have simply lost their minds and degenerated into mindless, enraged animals. If that is happening in San Diego, I imagine it is happening in a lot of other places as well.

The KPBS reporting includes this:
There was a time when people addressed the supervisors with politeness, even deference, using words like “honorable” to address them. Today, public commenters might open their remarks with, “Good morning, board of tyrants,” then accuse them of murder, wish aloud they would drop dead and lob racist insults.

The shift started in 2021 as supervisors became the face of COVID-related restrictions. Protestors flooded the meetings, public comment periods stretched on for hours, and the same group of commenters became meeting regulars. As their speech veered into threats or racist remarks, it raised questions of how to quell hostility that disrupted public meetings without violating First Amendment protections. That question continues today.


Here are some short, brutal examples of what incoherent, ignorant, enraged minds spew forth in public.













Fortunately, only a few savages act like this in public meetings. But what they lack in numbers, they make up with their deranged savagery.

I am a big fan of trying to assess credit and blame for things in politics and society. How much of this poison is coming from the radical right, how much from the radical left, and how much from the deranged crackpot conspiracy theory crowd, e.g., anti-vaxxers, microchips in vaccines believers, etc.? I doubt that much of it comes from other mindsets.

My guess:
~50% the fault (or credit if you like it) of American's radical right authoritarianism
~20% the fault of the radical left
~30% the fault of the deranged crackpot conspiracy theory crowd

One can only wonder, what is the social-political value of uncivilized free speech like the examples above compared to civilized free speech?

My guess:
Civilized free speech has a modest amount of positive social-political value and a negligible (almost zero) amount of negative social-political value
Uncivilized free speech has a negligible amount of positive social-political value, and a five-fold greater amount of negative social-political value than the positive value of civilized free speech



By Germaine: Deeply distressed observer of the decline and fall of American democracy and the rise of kleptocratic American authoritarianism


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