who needs sticks and stones?

You hear it, right? I mean, you do if you’re my age, plus or minus five years. “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me!”

It’s the snappy comeback our parents taught us to sing at our frenemies when we were kids. And it worked right up until someone decided to pick up a stick or a stone.

But here in 2021, we don’t need the sticks or the stones because our former president has changed the landscape. Simply by being the pompous asshole he is, he’s made it acceptable to be openly hostile, disrespectful, and... I’ll say it... dickish to other people. He’s lowered the bar for human behavior to a level that makes Angelica from Rug Rats seem like Miss Congeniality.

It started publicly during the 2016 campaign. You remember, right? “Lyin’ Ted.” “Little Marco.” “Crazy Bernie.” “Crooked Hillary.” I’m not here to dispute the truth of any of those nicknames. That isn’t the point. The point is that Trump’s name-calling campaign shined the spotlight on the ugly in Ugly American. His behavior enabled Hillary Clinton’s ill-advised “basket of deplorables” comment. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not defending Mrs. Clinton. I think she was a horrible candidate who ran an even worse campaign. But as I’ve said before, politics is a copycat league. And she copied the wrong cat.

But this isn’t about Hillary Clinton anymore. This is bigger than Hillary (even as much as she may protest that nothing is bigger than she is). It’s about the fact that Trump opened Pandora’s Box for name-calling. Now, if you don’t like what someone says or thinks, it’s perfectly okay to slap an “ist” or an “ism” on them. And it isn’t restricted to any political party. In fact, some self-proclaimed progressives do it more than anyone.

I’ve been meaning to write this since the first debate of 2020. Then-candidate Biden did all he could against then-President Trump’s barrage of interruptions and buffoonery. At some point, he just couldn’t take anymore. He sunk to Trump’s level, telling him to shut up and calling him a clown. And that’s when the wheels came off for America.

In those few moments, the high road disappeared. And I’m not sure how we’ll build it back. Maybe Pete Buttigieg can do it, now that he’s Secretary of Transportation.

But so far, President Biden has done nothing to make good on his promise to bridge the gap. But I’ll say what I did four years ago. I couldn’t have been more wrong then, but hopefully this time will be different. Give Joe a fighting chance. If he can keep us from devolving any further as a society, it will be a huge win. If he can get Republicans and Democrats to stop sniping at each other long enough to do the jobs we elected them to do, it will be an even bigger win. We can do our part to help by voting out the dead weight in Congress—they sit on both sides and we all know who they are. Hell, it may be a win if Joe can remember his own name for the next four years.

I recognize the irony in my writing about name-calling after I wrote that our former president is a pompous asshole. I believe that to be true, but it still isn’t okay. It’s also not okay that both sides are starting to pick up the sticks and the stones. It’s getting very dangerous out there, and it’s scary as shit. We need to find our humanity again. Find some civility and get back to the days when we could disagree without hate.

Cheers.