House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) meets with the media during a visit to the New Balance shoe factory at which he discussed tax reform on July 20, 2017 in Lawrence, Massachusetts. (Photo by Adam Glanzman/Getty Images)
This post first appeared at TalkPoverty.org.
Last week, Speaker of the House and all-around nice guy Paul Ryan (R-WI) released a video and a statement asking Americans to be more civil to one another. It was part of a push for legislation that Rep. Charlie Crist (D-FL) introduced a month ago to make July 12 a National Day of Civility. The bill, which was offered in response to the shooting that critically injured House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) and three others, encourages Americans to “be more respectful and polite to others in daily life.”
On the one hand, I can’t think of anything more American than responding to a mass shooting with a bill that suggests that everyone should remember to say “please” and “thank you.” But on the other, Ryan’s plea that we all just calm down — that we not “base our arguments on emotion” and instead “have a great debate on ideas and principles” — feels like a willful misunderstanding of the stakes that this administration has created.
In the past six months, this administration has pushed hard to dismantle the health care system. It is rolling back financial and environmental regulations, undercutting public schools and hacking away at the legal system. It has been actively hostile to immigrants, tried to defund Planned Parenthood and responded to the police shootings of 547 Americans by suggesting that the officers “choked.” These aren’t “ideas and principles” that we can chat about while we wait for someone to tap the next keg. They’re people’s lives. These policies will be felt intensely, and immediately, by the people that Speaker Ryan governs. And as long as the stakes are this high, I — respectfully — decline to be polite.
Politeness is a luxury, and it’s one that most Americans cannot afford. Polite people can raise their hand and wait quietly, confident that they will be called on and have their voices heard. But most of us never get called on. So what Paul Ryan is seeing — what is bubbling to the surface in the absence of politeness — is anger. This administration’s policies are forcing people to fight for their lives, and we are really, really mad.
Our anger gives us power. Anger allows us to demand attention instead of just hoping for it, which makes it one of the best vehicles that citizens have to exercise their rights in a representative democracy. Anger brings millions of Americans to a march in the middle of winter, it fuels them as they climb to the top of a 270-foot crane, it keeps them on-message even when they are under arrest and being dragged away without their wheelchairs.
Our anger makes Paul Ryan uncomfortable, so he is framing it as if we are out of control. It’s a centuries-old tactic to dismiss and discredit our rage. We saw it when Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was silenced for reading a letter, and when Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) was told her questions were too aggressive. We see it when a protest is called a riot, and when a politician refuses to engage with a constituent who is “too emotional.”
So I am sorry, Speaker Ryan, if you don’t like the way we’re talking. But we don’t like the way you’re governing, and we’re going to make you listen to what we have to say about it.
