You don’t win an argument by getting personal

‘If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant,’ Democratic Representative Maxine Waters railed to a California rally last month, ‘in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome any more, anywhere.’

So this is the way Americans do politics these days. It’s roll-up-the-sleeves down-and-dirty, and it’s personal.

Democratic activists have indeed harassed, hounded and heckled members of the Trump administration during their downtime at movie theatres, restaurants, and their own homes. Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, was ejected from a Lexington, Virginia restaurant because of the perceived toxicity of her politics. (It would have been illegal to refuse service to Sanders for being gay, black or disabled, but no American law forbids discrimination against Republicans.) Hence a national discussion about whether ‘civility’ should still play any part in a country that’s lost the plot in every other respect.

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Mind, the proprietor’s request that Sanders’ party leave the Red Hen was altogether civil compared to the blowback on the right. Trump supporters inundated the place with fake reservations and negative reviews on Yelp, where the establishment is now rated one-star. Eateries of the same name in other states were deluged with threatening phone calls. With Lexington’s Red Hen battered by protesters, one local innocent showed up for his Saturday dinner reservation, bewildered. For now, the restaurant is closed.

I confess to some backhanded sympathy for Trump’s stoic press secretary, and not mainly because she had to skip the cheese course. This poor woman has had to front for lies, faulty (meaning no) presidential research and scrawled-on-a-wet-napkin policy decisions, all with a straight face. I can’t imagine a worse job on the planet.