More Incivility Now, Please

Hamilton Nolan on the sudden outbreak of Pearl Clutching idiocy after a few known Trump Employees (i.e., Fascists) were heckled out of restaurants (emphasis mine):

"This is all going to get more extreme. And it should. We are living in extreme times. The harm that is being done to all of us by the people in the American government is extreme. To imagine that Mexican immigrants should happily cook for and serve meals to people who enable a man who is determined to demonize and persecute them as subhuman criminals is far more outrageous than the idea that those enablers should not be served in restaurants. I do not believe that Trump administration officials should be able to live their lives in peace and affluence while they inflict serious harms on large portions of the American population. Not being able to go to restaurants and attend parties and be celebrated is just the minimum baseline here. These people, who are pushing America merrily down the road to fascism and white nationalism, are delusional if they do not think that the backlash is going to get much worse. Wait until the recession comes. Wait until Trump starts a war. Wait until the racism this administration is stoking begins to explode into violence more frequently. Read a fucking history book. Read a recent history book. The U.S. had thousands of domestic bombings per year in the early 1970s. This is what happens when citizens decide en masse that their political system is corrupt, racist, and unresponsive. The people out of power have only just begun to flex their dissatisfaction. The day will come, sooner that you all think, when Trump administration officials will look back fondly on the time when all they had to worry about was getting hollered at at a Mexican restaurant. When you aggressively fuck with people’s lives, you should not be surprised when they decide to fuck with yours."

Of course the media hasn't spent much time talking about the context of these incidents -- the restaurant business in America is built on the backs of immigrants, legal or otherwise.  I doubt the likes of Sarah Sanders or Stephen Miller would be aware of this, but even someone like me with just a few summer vacation's worth of experience bussing and serving knows this.

And if kids being stripped from parents and put into cages isn't enough of a call for "incivility," what the hell is?

I'm from the D.C. area and as Nolan points out, there's nothing more D.C. than coming home from your well-paid lobbying or journalism gig and thinking that racist, anti-immigrant policies are just abstractions to be written up in win-lose columns, not instruments of power that destroy lives.

More incivility now, please.  The more the better.

Update:  Amy McCarthy is also very, very good on this:

"Some posit that being discourteous will somehow make them less likely to 'come around to our side.' But would they have anyway? Is sitting down to a plate of fajitas somehow going to make Kirstjen Nielsen — who, as the head of the DHS, has been instrumental to what can be described, without hyperbole, as ICE’s reign of terror — recognize that immigrants are humans? The idea that the right platter of queso fundido, served with a smile, could convince Nielsen to stop enforcing the administration’s inhumane policies feels naive at best.

It’s not a little curious to argue that an administration that has completely shattered countless norms surrounding political discourse and basic decency, or that people who dehumanize others, are owed civility, to say nothing of the right to hospitality — the very thing they are so committed to denying to other people. The prevailing, Danny Meyer-style approach to hospitality in the restaurant industry— 'enlightened hospitality' — makes room for not serving people who are actively engaged in harming others; it encourages restaurateurs to consider how their overall product makes a customer feel, and to build a culture that empowers their employees. What kind of hospitality is owed to a fascist in your restaurant? On the other hand, is it hospitable for a restaurant owner to subject her immigrant employees to a person who refers to immigrants as an 'infestation,' as Trump has?"

This is basically a logic two-for-one.  By definition no, you don't owe fascists or racists your civility.  And second, it's only in the fever-dreams of Beltway pundits that "shrill" lefties start acting nice and Trump voters magically scratch their chins and ponder the benefits of a Kamala Harris presidency.