President Donald Trump certainly did his part in setting the table for the current state of public discourse. Make what you will of his agenda: His successful campaign has transformed the substance of political speech. This is an era when offhand vulgarity counts as straight talk; when “bomb the s— out of” ISIS becomes a policy plank; when George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” might as well be a consultant’s handbook, for not only can you now say them on the stump, you are likely to lead the evening newscasts as a result. This is not about what was said in some bus on a Hollywood set 12 years ago. It is about taking such language to the lectern—mouthing the F-word or using slang for the female anatomy in a rally venue—and then arriving behind a podium embossed with the presidential seal.
But if Trump was a trendsetter, the trend is real, and he’s far from alone. Four-letter words are now the terms with which we conduct significant debates. Obama Labor secretary Tom Perez adopted “No more bulls—” as a virtual yard sign in his quest to become Democratic party chairman. He won. He recently told a gathering of activists in New Jersey that Republicans “don’t give a s— about people.” Provided the opportunity to comment, Perez’s spokeswoman doubled down. “Tom Perez won’t apologize for saying ‘Republicans don’t give a s— about people,’ ” the Washington Post‘s Dave Weigel tweeted. “Sorry not sorry,” Perez replied—because if Democrats have learned anything in the last six months, it’s that backing down is for losers.
The Post also noted that Perez has said Trump graduated from “Makin’ S— Up University” and called the new White House’s labor orders “bulls—.” New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand would almost certainly agree, in violation of what might be branded her “help or go home” mantra. In a New York magazine profile published last week, the rising Democrat spoke about her effort to get moderate Republican Susan Collins of Maine to join a couple of her legislative causes. “I know Susan’s worldview is similar to my worldview,” she said. “Which is that we’re here to help people, and if we’re not helping people, we should go the f— home.” Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your f—ing country, in other words.
Perez and Gillibrand have the bare restraints of being elected political figures to keep them from going too blue. Alex Jones does not. Fighting out of the red corner somewhere in outer space, the radio host and conspiracy theorist’s ascendancy has paralleled Trump’s—he interviewed the candidate for half an hour in December 2015 and said 90 percent of the millions in his audience supported Trump’s campaign. Those folks were treated last week to what Jones cautioned was a rarity in his routine tirades: scattershot expletives, these directed at Democrat and House Intelligence Committee ranking member Adam Schiff. He packed 24 swears into 75 seconds. And somewhere, Joe Pesci blushes.
The issue with such crude vocabulary becoming prevalent in the public square is not its inherent nastiness: American politics has thrived without comity for about 230 years. (It was in 1788 that Patrick Henry warned Virginia against picking James Madison for the Senate because his “election would terminate in producing rivulets of blood throughout the land.” Madison finished third.) Rather, the issue is precision. A coarse and ineloquent language might be able to leverage the public’s emotions into electoral victory. But it is utterly ill-equipped to do effectively what comes next.
It’s difficult by default to forge compromise on complex matters like health care, which feature slates of jargon that officials are forced to distill for public consumption. The task is even tougher when one party begins warning of “death panels” and the other depicts Republicans pushing grandmother off a cliff. Any hopes of accord are eroded completely once prominent figures purposely head for the gutter. Vulgar insults help fast-track the process to its conclusion.
