Saturday, Oct. 2, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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I was on an airplane last month for just the second time since early 2020, when everything locked down due to the pandemic. I was nervous.
Not of catching COVID-19 from a fellow passenger. Flying has been ruled relatively safe.
Not of flying itself, although I’ve always been a bit of a nervous Nellie about crashing.
No, I was nervous that one of my fellow passengers was going to lose it about being forced to wear a mask and terrorize the airline staff, which has been occurring with alarming frequency, a House subcommittee learned recently.
My flight came just a few weeks after I’d eaten at a favorite local restaurant. Its longtime hostess told me she has been in tears in the bathroom a few times, thanks to rude, entitled customers who berate her, expecting everything to be the same as in the Before Times, which it clearly is not as her restaurant and others struggle to find workers.
The country has become a nation of bullies.
I don’t know Amy Peele, a Novato, Calif., city councilwoman who recently stepped down less than two years into her position, but I get her reasoning for doing so. In her brief time on the council, she was subject to “constant name-calling, vitriol, shaming and toxic comments, and emails from members of our community,” she said.
“People need to continue to show up and speak up and participate in the decision-making process that impacts the future of our city. But please, I implore you, we need to do so with more respect and civility toward our staff, elected officials and fellow community members even when we disagree on the issue at hand.”
Respect and civility. That shouldn’t be too hard, right? And yet it’s increasingly disappearing.
Like Peele, I have been on the receiving end of anything but respect and civility. Just look at the comments under any of my columns or when they’re posted on Facebook. I don’t take them personally — who would? Still, I wonder why people are so nasty. So a few weeks ago, I invited one of my consistently nasty critics to meet me for a cup of coffee — my treat! — to see if we could find some commonality, or at least an understanding. I was rejected. Much easier and perhaps more satisfying to slam me while being anonymous.
A few months ago, I saw a man throwing a ball to his dog on the baseball fields not far from my house and not far from the dedicated three-acre dog park. There were signs everywhere noting that the fields were closed so they could get their much-needed restoration between seasons, and that dogs were not allowed. As the person who laundered my boys’ Little League pants for many years, I know all about dog poop stains on white pants. So I gently pointed out that the fields were closed as I gestured to the signs. He called me a hussy. Much easier to attack a woman’s sexuality than acknowledge that you’re doing something wrong.
We are, of course, only recently out of four years of bullying by our former president, not only of his fellow Republicans but pretty much everyone else who didn’t agree with him or his policies. The sad thing is, bullying works.
In California alone, we’ve lost 15% of our election officials because of threats, including death threats.
Public health officials have been quitting due to threats; public health workers aren’t faring much better.
Across the country, many teachers have already quit or are considering it, exhausted by bullying. So are school board members.
Restaurant workers are leaving, in part because of abusive customers. Same with retail workers.
This is truly problematic.
And it’s not just political discourse; almost all online discourse is disrespectful and mean-spirited. And even in real life. To what good?
We have some serious problems to address in our country and the world. How can we possibly address them if we can’t communicate and listen with an open mind and kind heart? Who will teach our kids, attend to our health needs, monitor our elections, serve us a meal or ring up our purchases?
We all lose when bullies win. All of us. And it models for young people that bullying will get them what they want, the exact opposite of what most parents and schools teach them. But as all of us know, actions speak louder than words.
My offer for a cup of coffee still stands, dear nasty critic. I’ll even throw in a local, organic, gluten-free pastry! Don’t worry, though — I refuse to bully you into it.
Vicki Larson is a columnist for The Marin Independent Journal in Novato, Calif.
