SHAME ON US.

• Author: Bresler, Robert J.
• Position: NATIONAL AFFAIRS

"It indeed will be a daunting challenge to recapture the threads of civility and the moral framework that once made America the hope of the world." SOMEONE hurls a vile obscene invective toward a sitting president, and a whole crowd joins in--unembarrassed and unbridled. A magazine writer objects to the tax policy of South Dakota and concludes the state should be abolished and merged into North Dakota. Too many see their political opponents as not just misguided, but downright evil.

Only a fool thinks such bloodsport is harmless. Building a stable, prosperous, and open democracy is an endless project. It requires a culture that promotes self-restraint and mutual accommodation. Despite a Civil War, two world wars, the stain of racial bondage, and economic depressions, Americans continued to do that difficult and often painful work. This country made considerable progress toward creating a colorblind meritocracy in a multi-racial, multi-ethnic society with vastly different heritages.

In today's combustible environment, that progress is at risk. The cultural threads that bound this powerful and complex industrial and technological country are fraying. For reasons that defy common sense, we are doing it to ourselves. Vituperation, vulgarity, and outright hatred are replacing civilized discourse. As politicians and self-proclaimed pundits rail against each other, decent people may want to turn their eyes. This descent did not happen overnight, nor begin during the Trump Administration, although the former president made a healthy contribution. To use a famous phrase, it began "gradually, then suddenly." When social and moral taboos fall, decadence arises and eventually morphs into vivid forms of barbarism.

Social decay begins imperceptibly and, at first, appears harmless. The early signs were found in the erosion of traditional authority often voluntarily relinquished. For instance, parents who went shopping with their children once dressed with a certain decorum. While their offspring may wear t-shirt and jeans, parents would wear nothing of the sort, considering such attire childish. For some decades now, one could walk a shopping mall and parents and their children could be found in the same unkempt clothing; from a distance, one may not discern who is the parent and who is the child. This pattern indicated something far more troubling: many adults were becoming perpetual adolescents.

As the sexual revolution accelerated and swept through the...