Civility Is Not Politeness

by Timothy Kirchoff

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A decade – or perhaps a lifetime – ago, in early 2016, former Speaker of the House John Boehner and then-Vice President Joe Biden jointly received the prestigious Laetare medal at the University of Notre Dame commencement ceremony. Both spoke about civility and the importance of working together across divisions. 

The cause of bipartisanship and civility has had no comparable photo op in the following decade, and the once-familiar voice of the experienced and thick-skinned public figure calling for civility has grown ever-fainter in the perpetual din of social media.

In moments like the one we now find ourselves in, such pundits could once have been counted on to produce op-eds extolling the virtue and necessity of civility. If such op-eds are still being written, they are not being widely read; it seems today that civility is a cause incapable of producing converts. 

But why are these experienced writers, these well-practiced persuaders, so incapable of producing an argument that people are prepared to hear? Is it just the current media environment that makes it impossible, or is there an actual flaw in their familiar arguments?

From 2017 until early 2024, I was the moderator – and later primary administrator – of a Facebook group dedicated to discussing Catholic social thought and contemporary politics. In that unhappy role, I often tried to encourage a certain level of mutual respect among the group’s participants – with no successes worth mentioning. No one who was aspiring to a standard of civility needed any guidance from me, and those who were not interested in treating others with genuine respect could not be persuaded to do so. 

In retrospect, it is obvious that the only people who had any interest in being reminded of the rules were those who wanted to hide behind them as they made insensitive or provocative statements. I had fallen in love with the particular model of discourse laid out in the group guidelines which I inherited, but in trying to guide people toward that model, I ended up giving advice and cover to bad-faith actors while scolding people for expressing justified frustration in unapproved ways. I wanted to make sure the group could welcome a greater diversity of Catholic perspectives, but the kind of people who would have most appreciated that space would not have enjoyed the company of the people I was hoping could be integrated.

My past decade of participation in public discourse leaves me with two possible interpretations of civility. 

In its most familiar form, civility is essentially a kind of gatekeeping, of ensuring that public channels of discussion are available only to those who speak with enough deference to the powers that be. Anyone who can’t speak with the right kind of politeness and respect won’t receive any respect in turn. People who do not know how to express themselves according to often-arbitrary rules are shamed or entirely excluded from public discussions. 

However, the Internet, having democratized discourse and decimated the impact of legacy media, has made it very difficult to limit which topics can be discussed and how. Even attempts by social media giants to constrain speech lead to either the adoption of new platforms that don’t engage in censorship…or the adoption of euphemisms that evade algorithmic detection.

This leaves me with the other understanding of civility – the meaning that more closely derives from the word’s etymological root: civitas, the city. Civility as the virtues of a city means approaching discussions with your neighbor in such a way that you can remain neighbors afterwards. It means treating the other participant in the conversation as also being a worthy participant in society, someone with whom we want to cooperate in making society better.

A mode of discourse that belittles or dehumanizes the other person, that gives them – even subtly – the impression that their perspective or very personhood isn’t worthy of respect, is not civil even if its provocations are cloaked in politeness. Talking in a way that tells any class of people that they don’t deserve to exist in the same society as you is not civil in this sense, no matter how politely your words are framed. 

If I made more enemies than necessary in my time moderating that Facebook group, it’s because I focused more on superficial politeness than genuine engagement: the people who either didn’t really need or weren’t interested in the group’s standards of civility were likely to feel patronized or insulted by even general reminders. In some cases, I ended up alienating some people whose insights and friendship I think I really would have benefited from, if I hadn’t made the space – or my presence in itself – unwelcoming to them by trying so hard to accommodate people whose only real interest was in scoring points in ideological battles or personal vendettas. Too often, I was trying to make room for a superficial diversity of perspectives rather than for people with something valuable to add.

Once, when spending a morning in the back of a truck distributing sandwiches to a poor neighborhood, the subject of politics came up among the volunteers. I remember how carefully we all danced around sensitive subjects until we had signaled adequately where our sympathies were. We wanted to be able to get along, to avoid unnecessary arguments with each other or any significant distraction from our shared task, and the fact that we knew we would be spending the next few hours together made this improvised rhetorical dance all the more fulfilling. I have had a few discussions with co-workers that have followed similar paths: finding ways to express our individual sympathies, fears, and frustrations in ways that uphold the commitment to support each other in the same community. 

When our goal in opening a political discussion is “I want to understand how other people see problems” and not “I want to share my own political opinions and these people have to put up with it,” the results change in accordance with our intentions.

If there is a missing piece to calls for civility over the past decade, I think this is it: there is no real sense of missed opportunity or regret from the people promoting it. The elder statesmen, well-established editors, and experienced pundits are the apex predators in stable public discourse, and they gain nothing from acknowledging their own serious mistakes, missed opportunities, or interpersonal what-ifs. 

No one in power today has any incentive to discuss or dream how things might be better today if they had personally extended more understanding to someone else’s concerns during previous policy debates. They themselves have nothing left to learn from civility… or, rather, our current understanding of how to get along has nothing new to learn from a generation of leaders stuck in its own past. 

Granted, many aspects of the current media landscape encourage extreme polarized discourse, and in the avenues where people make money from controversy, an approach that shows respect for others is actively discouraged. But in less sensational forums, the sense that we genuinely have something to lose by alienating the person in front of us may still have some power. The digital city is a jungle, but in more personal communities, there may be hope for a more authentic civility.

Unfortunately, any discussion of policy change must survive the predators of the digital media jungle – a despair-inducing reality which makes the downtrodden and desperate ever more isolated and prone to various forms of radicalization, which in turn can give rise to violence. 

With the policy avenue effectively closed (no matter how obvious it is that certain measures would alleviate the frequency and impact of shootings), the one remedy I can offer is what was offered to me in the aftermath of my own moments of vocational crisis: the invitation to responsibility. 

The previous administrator of the Facebook group I mentioned above is just one example of an adult who took a chance in giving me responsibility and who then let me bear the full weight of that responsibility. I had to learn some lessons the hard way, but the encouragement of mentors was a key factor that kept me from falling too deeply into self-pity and depression.

This brings me back again to my preferred definition of civility: treating the other person as someone with whom we want to cooperate in making society better. If you can't find a way to see someone as a possible collaborator in building a better society, you may come to see them as a threat and treat them accordingly.

The invitation to community and responsibility is in fact a call to this kind of civility. Inviting young adults to become part of a network of responsibilities draws out their energy in healthy ways. If the community does not draw their energy out from them through these healthy challenges, that frustrated energy will turn inward – or worse, pour itself out into the dark corners of the internet – in search of connection, validation, and calls to action.