Canada is "Nice"

Yesterday my son Greg sent me an article that he thought would interest me… “Outright Barbarism vs. the Civil Society” by Sara Robinson (Campaign for America's Future), an American who now lives in Vancouver, B.C. He was right, and because our experience in Canada, and concerns for the future of the United States are similar to the author, I would like to share the article with you. She begins with:

“ I live in a nice place. I mean that literally. It took some getting used to. After 20 years in Silicon Valley, where people put a premium on being direct and to the point, have no time to waste on small talk or personal sharing, and will call a stupid idea stupid to your face, moving to Canada required a whole lot of gearing back on that brusque American aggressive-in-your-face thing. The humbling fact was: We had to learn to mind our manners.

Much of the adjustment work that first year involved re-learning the art of Being Nice. We had to get used to meetings that started with 10 or 15 minutes of personal chit-chat. We had to train ourselves to stop interrupting people, and to be more careful to say "please" and "thank you." …Civility is, in a very real sense, the glue that holds this big, diverse nation together. Name-calling, othering, and losing one's temper is, quite simply, un-Canadian and unpatriotic. … In the land where "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is supplanted by "peace, order, and good government" as the organizing values, there is simply no excuse at all for that kind of behavior, ever.”

So when and where did the United States go wrong, to become a violent, intolerant, polarized nation that feeds upon itself and others? Sara Robinson reviews a recently published book “Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy”
by Jeffrey Feldman (New York based anthropologist and author of Framing the Debate). An expert on language and political messaging, he describes how “30 years of us-versus-them rhetoric has polarized the country, forced us into unnecessary conflicts against each other and everyone else, and virtually destroyed our ability to govern ourselves.” More from Sara Robinson:

“Taken as a whole, Feldman argues persuasively that the right wing's use of violent language and imagery over the past 30 years has gravely, deeply - perhaps even mortally - wounded the American body politic. As social theorists from John Dewey to Miss Manners have pointed out - and as my Canadian neighbors seem to understand as the central fact of their civic existence - civility is the necessary ingredient that allows democracies to function. Without it, there is no common good, no mutual respect, no reason to have faith in our ability to govern together wisely and well. When these basic agreements fail, so does our ability to self-govern. Reading this book from my peaceable perch on a mountainside in western Canada, the destruction of America's civic order, as Feldman describes it, looks utter and complete.

If we want democracy, we need to be able to see our fellow citizens as human beings, possessed of their own inherent worth and dignity.

If we want justice, we need to grant them the same rights and respect we feel entitled to - even when they're strenuously disagreeing with us, or when their interests and ours line up on opposite poles.

If we want security, we must first learn to be safe with each other, and trust ourselves as guardians of our collective well-being.

A final note. The idea that Being Nice is a sign of weakness is, as noted above, inherent in the conservative narrative Feldman describes. Anger merchants like (Ann) Coulter and (Bill) O'Reilly have sold an entire generation of Americans on the idea that the mere desire to gather facts, contemplate them calmly, and discuss them rationally with people who might have other points of view makes one a traitor to the nation - weak, ineffectual, and dangerously liberal.”

The belief that being nice is a sign of weakness is an attitude with no future… or at least not any kind of future that I want to contemplate. When I was being unkind, my Grandmother would look at me and say, “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” In other words, Be Nice. With some exceptions of course, Canadians seem already to know this; but Americans need to relearn that old folkism… and the value of civility.

... P. L. Morningstar