According to Merriam-Webster the word civil has multiple meanings. It is fascinating to me that the same word means “adequate in courtesy and politeness”, and an alternate meaning (which has to do with code of laws) is “relating to private rights and to remedies sought by action or suit distinct from criminal proceedings”. Hence we have two standards of laws - “civil law” and “criminal law”. These different codes of law have a history that dates back all the way to the Code of Hammurabi and King Solomon.
Similarly the word civility is defined as “civilized conduct” or “a polite act or expression”. Ok so what is civilized? I love how Merriam-Webster puts this, as “especially : characterized by taste, refinement, or restraint”. If there is anything that is missing in our public discourse right now, it is taste, refinement, and restraint.
If our own major outlet media personalities, elected leaders, and officials that work as career personnel in government can’t conduct themselves in a manner that is characterized by taste, refinement, or restraint then should they not be subject to certain corrective action and possible dismissal? At the very least they should be required to undergo disciplinary action. To find examples of this behavior, look no further than Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ted Cruz, or Lauren Boebert. I’m not particularly a fan of FiveThirtyEight but this piece by Perry Bacon Jr places the blame squarely on Republicans for upping the ante on uncivilized behavior.
Many of our civil laws deal with slander and libel. Slander, according to Merriam-Webster, occurs when an individual vocalizes something - “the utterance of false charges or misrepresentations which defame and damage another's reputation”. Libel has the same effect but is in written form. Are some things on Infowars examples of libel? Maybe or maybe not. Is it factually in error? Definitely yes. Is it civilized? Definitely not. Alex Jones has been convicted of slander (with his radio show), and the facts supported the ruling.
I blame the fact that people have not been properly educated concerning how the internet works, and how websites like Infowars get all of their content. Alex Jones doesn’t make stuff up. He copies it. He and others like him “build” a story, along with videos and images which are literally just stock images/video content. The stories are designed for a single purpose: to keep the reader coming back for more in two ways: convincing the reader that “you can’t trust anyone else” to tell you the truth and “the truth is so diabolical that no one wants you to know what is happening”. Sounds like a cult, doesn’t it…
But it didn’t start there. The audience was already captive, by something that is still to this day a very profitable enterprise: cable television. An interesting take on the effects of TV viewing and perceptions of reality - worldview - was written in November, 1980 in a University of Pennsylvania publication Newsday, in the “Ideas” section. The title of the article was TV: The New Religion Controlling Us.
UNESCO published an educational piece about journalism and the need to be able to trust the sources of news. At a time when what is true is being deemed false, and what is real is being deemed fake we are in danger of losing a very important piece of civilized society. At the heart of a functioning and healthy democracy is the ability to trust and rely upon the information we receive - whether about events or about people at the center of those events. The publication is called Journalism, Fake News and Disinformation (and is distributable using Creative Commons license).
Now here’s the rub. Internet infrastructure and social platform companies (like Facebook) are now profiting from misinformation. So why would they stop? Unless the law compels them to do so, it is unlikely that they will. And unfortunately companies that profit from misinformation will be more likely to keep allowing us to be misinformed in our online content which is curated as it closely matches us, because they need the public to justify advertising. The cycle of misinformation will not just stop on its own. The voting public will need to collectively put itself on an information diet. How can civil society survive when every decision made is based on lies, deceit, and mischaracterizations of events/people?
All of our leaders, whether they be the CEO of a mega-media company, a U.S. Senator, or U.S. Representative, Governor, and the list goes on, need to be held to a high standard of decency and decorum. President Biden made a mistake when he said that Kyle Rittenhouse was a “white supremacist”. This was out of character for the person who is Joe Biden, though. We should ask ourselves who regularly, and makes a concerted effort in saying and doing things that bring out the worst behavior in people, and who surround themselves with people who also benefit from divisiveness, fear, and contention. These things do not belong in civil discourse. These things do not belong in government nor in board rooms and policy-making meetings (like school boards and town councils).
There is a list that starts with the Koch brothers, and extends to celebrities like Donald J. T***p and all of the people in orbit around him. These people have allowed themselves to behave with incivility, and every voter should reject anyone that has similar dispensation. On either side of the political spectrum. Because if voters do not reject the worst of us, then the country will become the worst, in our laws, our statutes, and our civil life. We will become our own worst selves. And we will only have ourselves to blame.