civility was being used as kind of a cudgel to shut people up and to stop the argument

rather than to further it.

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Now welcome to this episode of the award winning best of left podcast in which we shall

learn about the attempts to distract us from real issues with calls for civility and attempts

to suppress descent altogether with various bands and impediments to protesting.

Clips today come from on the media, newsbeat, citations needed, democracy now, the Trump

cast and counter spin.

For since the 2016 election, we've been pondering the obliteration of our norms.

But seen in the context of history, that's normal.

The First World War, the Depression, the Second World War, jazz, rock and roll, the Vietnam

War, alienation and the internet.

Keith Baibi, author of How Civility Works, says every generation of Americans has found

a reason to bimmon the end of courtesy and respect.

But the fact is, civility can be a tool of oppression.

Jim Crow segregation was surrounded and sustained by a racial etiquette.

Martin Luther King spoke about this quite eloquently in his letter from Birmingham and jail.

You don't call the wife of an African American Mrs. She always gets dressed by her first

name.

...