Course, vulgar, hateful, racist comments and threats should not be acceptable in a civil society.

[kentuck]

But, as every American knows, Donald Trump knows no bounds when it comes to hateful and racist threats. He has been that way since day one. It should not be acceptable.

Unfortunately, many people were attracted to such comments and threats. They excused it as "anti-political correctness". "He tells it like it is", they said. No, he did not.

Our words define who we are as a person. A civil society cannot accept violent and hateful language simply as a means for compromise or to get along. We cannot surrender the principles that make us thinking, compassionate humans, who care for our fellow man. The other way is a path to darkness. We cannot accept that.

We are now experiencing the results of accepting those vile and hateful comments into our society. There is a price to be paid for hatred and racism.

We are beginning to reap what we have sown.

[Ocelot II]

1. It seems like everything has been coarsened.

For starters there's a lot of profanity in TV shows and movies that didn't used to be there, in particular lots of F-bombs. I suppose the intent is to reflect the way people really speak, but do they? I often write fuck here on DU, my "safe" space, but I seldom say it, maybe because I'm old and I never heard that word at home (I'd have ended up with a mouthful of soap...), and it still makes me cringe a bit when I hear it spoken. On the other hand, its forbidden quality is why we once used it to express intense feeling, but overusing it has weakened it. I want a replacement for fuck, which no longer does the job because everybody says it all the time.

Is there a slippery slope leading from coarse language to coarse behavior? I don't know, but it seems like people in general have turned into rude slobs who cuss like longshoremen, call each other names, and wear cutoffs and flip-flops to funerals. I sure sound like an old fogey when I write this but it seems like nobody respects anything or anybody, treating other people like bothersome obstacles and the world like their garbage dump. When nothing is respected it's too easy to move to the next step and start destroying just because you feel like it and you don't care. I guess that's nihilism.

Maybe I'll take my grumpy old self off to the woods while there still is a woods.