What do you think accounts for the rise in incivility? [View all]

[Stinky The Clown]

That rise is evident everywhere.

Stand in the grocery line and you'll hear people being rude, often to the cashiers, but also to each other.

Look at the weekly magazines and newspapers. Front page incivility.

The movies and teevee shows, where incivility is celebrated.

Think of your own driving habits. You yelling at other drivers. Other drivers flipping you off. Incivility abounds. They ought to report that on the Traffic On The Eights segments.

In politics, you see incivility raised to a fine art. Institutionalized meanness. Self control is seen as a weakness. Just blurt it out. "You Lie!" The term "My Friend" said with the venomous inflection we can safely assume was learned from a rattlesnake.

Look at the internet. Blogs that take distinct sides and, lacking the ability to have face to face encounters, raise the temperature of the rhetoric to levels that, in polite society, could land one in front of judge, charge with threat to do bodily harm.

We are all guilty of this. All of us. All sides of all issues represented by incivility.

Where did it come from?

I have no doubt many will consider this and point to someone else.

Probably loudly.

With a glare.

Or a sneer.

How did we get here? And when?