It was 73 degrees on Jan. 3 in St. Louis. Two days before Christmas, we had a major ice storm and temperatures that were below zero. I had hoped that the unusually warm weather would portend the start of a time of civility, that the rage and discord we’d felt throughout the country might be reduced, or at least delayed past the first week of 2023. I was immediately dissuaded of that fantasy when I witnessed three men in a heated, profanity-laced screaming match on the parking lot of the Ladue Crossing Schnucks. There was something about the way the argument unfolded that suggested it wasn’t just about a parking space but also about big vehicles, big egos and bigger politics.
No matter how much we’d dreamed of returning to normalcy after the midterm elections, it appears that the vitriol caused by the unfounded doubt and violence following the 2020 presidential election remains. Undoubtedly, we have more aggression and division to experience after all.
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Contrary to the reigning stereotypical opinion that only Black people engage in such lunacy, the participants of this particular assault on civility were three middle-aged white guys screaming obscenities at each other, all close to my car. Oblivious to the fact that this was an argument, I continued toward my car until I found myself in the middle of the fray. I discovered it was about a parking space. It seemed one of the guys had parked his full-sized wagon in a space that was a cart depository, leaving it slightly extended into the drive lane. Before I arrived, this driver must have said he was allowed to park like this in Alaska, because the other two guys (who were not together) screamed profanely that he should go back to Alaska. At one point, the guy who was parked next to me backed his car out into the lane, turned off the engine, and continued to yell expletives at the Alaska guy, now heading toward the store entrance. Thankfully, no weapons were displayed.
Sadly, as the battle for the speaker of the House demonstrated last week, a lack of civility and respect permeates the nation and contributes to the schisms we see. It started during the Trump era and has now seeped down to the masses like slime, exacerbated by social media. Rudeness is now acceptable. Each branch of government maintains an adversarial role against the others, causing a continuous series of stalemates.
How can any progress be made or compromise be reached if the parties involved demand everything on their agendas — and want it immediately? Worse, when they fail to receive the deference or the spoils they are demanding, they resort to name-calling and/or obstructionism. This is Congress today. The promised good for the rest of us is often supplanted by deep-pocketed special interest groups or ignored in favor of partisan power and revenge. I didn’t actually understand how this super-partisan atmosphere affected us until then-Judge Merrick Garland was denied an audience following his nomination by President Barack Obama to the Supreme Court. That finally opened my eyes.
Before that I, like millions of others, was too busy living my day-to-day life to worry, thinking that we as a nation had resolved most of our major problems in the 1960s and 1970s. Arcane voting laws had been squelched, and the states found guilty of using them to disenfranchise people were under scrutiny by the federal government. Forced segregation was obliterated. Women had ownership of their bodies thanks to Roe v. Wade.
We’ve forgotten that we are a country of united states. Instead, today, people see only red or blue. If not for the demands and foot-stomping of the progressives on the left, could the Democrats have kept control of the House? Maybe. Conversely, did the petulance of the election-deniers and conspiracy-theorists on the right keep them from gaining control of the Senate? Possibly. What now?
Even if we can no longer protest in the streets like in the 1960s, we can still fight for our interests. We need to make ourselves and our issues known to our legislators, if not daily, then weekly. Write, call, text them, and then repeat the next day. And the next. Remind them that they’re supposed to be representing all of us, not just the red or blue squeaky wheels. But don’t devolve to the level of name-calling or physical assault. Be civil.
Janet Y. Jackson is a Post-Dispatch columnist and Editorial Board member.
