I think a great many people are getting way too comfortable with horrible things.
Some have become way too comfortable being cruel to one another.
I loved it when Mike Tyson said, “Social media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”
I never ever thought I would quote Mike Tyson, and I’m not advocating punching anybody in the face. But I certainly understand his point.
People say things on social media that I simply cannot imagine them saying while sitting across a table from another human being. “You’re disgusting.” “You’re ugly.” “Nobody cares what you think.” “You’re a terrible parent.” “I hope your marriage fails.” “Libtard.” “Go kill yourself.”
People make fun of someone’s weight, their age, their face, their children, their grief, their intelligence, their illness. They take the most vulnerable thing someone has shared about themselves and turn it into a weapon.
I see it all the time when I post my political thoughts.
What the hell happened to us?
There is a human being on the other side of that screen. Maybe that person is already barely holding it together. Maybe they just lost someone. Maybe their marriage is falling apart. Maybe they are terrified about money. Maybe they are sick. Maybe they are depressed. Maybe your little clever insult, which took you twelve seconds to type, stays inside their head for twelve years.
Social media did not invent cruelty, of course. But it removed so many of the things that used to restrain it. You don’t see the other person’s face change. You don’t see their eyes. You don’t hear the silence after you say something terrible. You can wound somebody and never have to witness the wound.
And unfortunately, politicians have learned to take enormous advantage of social media, exploiting its speed, outrage and divisiveness to amplify their messages, inflame emotions, turn people against one another, and normalize a kind of cruelty that once would have been far harder to get away with in public life.
Of course Donald Trump did not invent political ugliness. American politics has been vicious since the beginning. But Trump has repeatedly used language that would once have been extraordinary coming from a president or major presidential candidate: calling political opponents “vermin,” describing domestic opponents as “the enemy from within,” calling some migrants “animals” and “not human,” and making intensely personal attacks on journalists and political opponents. He calls women: “fat pig,” “dog,” “slob,” “disgusting animal,” mocked Alicia Machado as “Miss Piggy,” said of Carly Fiorina “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?”, suggested Megyn Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever,” boasted that when you’re famous you can “grab ’em by the pussy.”
About race, ethnicity and immigrants, he said Mexican immigrants were bringing “drugs” and “crime” and called some “rapists,” referred to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries”, told four congresswomen of color to “go back” to the countries they came from, said immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” described some immigrants as “animals” and “not people,” promoted the false claim that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, promoted a meme showing the Obama’s as apes, called Somali immigrants “garbage” and said they should go “back to where they came from.”
And words matter, particularly when they come from the most powerful person in the country. A leader should appeal to people’s best instincts. Donald Trump appeals to the worst.
George Washington understood that everything the first president did would establish a precedent: “As the first of everything,” Washington wrote, whatever he did, substantially as well as stylistically, would “serve to establish a precedent.”
John Adams understood that the president’s character and actions would become the daily contemplation of the American people: “His person, countenance, character, and actions, are made the daily contemplation and conversation of the whole people.”
Adams’ great rival Thomas Jefferson agreed. “In a government like ours,” Jefferson wrote, “it is the duty of the Chief-magistrate, in order to enable himself to do all the good which his station requires, to endeavor, by all honorable means, to unite in himself the confidence of the whole people.”
Harry Truman later put the obligation beautifully: a president should not encourage people’s prejudices, but appeal to their better instincts.
I think it is fair to say that most recently both President Obama and President Biden lived by these sage practices, with Michelle Obama being famously quoted, “When they go low we go high”, but that idea seems almost quaint now.
But it shouldn’t. It shouldn’t! 
We learn from our leaders, and leadership gives permission. When powerful people demonstrate restraint, generosity and respect, they make those qualities respectable. When powerful people ridicule, humiliate, name-call and dehumanize, they can make those things seem permissible, too.
And eventually we begin doing it to each other.
That’s the country I fear we are living in now. 
So what the hell do we do? Is the United States doomed to this future of division, anger and hatred? Sometimes I fear we are.
But surrendering to that fear guarantees exactly the future we’re afraid of. At some point, we have to decide that cynicism doesn’t get the last word.
As John Lennon wrote, “You may say I’m a dreamer.” Well, perhaps I am, but I’ll wear that title proudly for I believe the future is shaped by those who refuse to give up on their dreams, who still believe we can be better than this, and who are willing to do the work to make those dreams real.
We have to keep doing what is right because it is right, regardless of how it turns out, as Václav Havel said.
And perhaps doing what is right begins with some surprisingly simple things. Think of the extraordinary restraint of Nelson Mandela, the dignity of Martin Luther King Jr., the grace of Desmond Tutu. These were not weak men. They confronted hatred, injustice and oppression with enormous courage, but also with patience, self-control, empathy, discipline, respect and an extraordinary ability to listen. Their civility was not a surrender of strength. It was an expression of it. These are the kind of leaders I want. 
So maybe we begin with something embarrassingly old-fashioned.
Good manners. I know. It sounds almost stupid. Childish. Far too simple an answer for something as enormous as hatred, division and the unraveling of our ability to talk to one another.
But maybe some of the biggest problems begin with the smallest choices.
Practice saying please and thank you. Practice listening when you desperately want to interrupt. Practice disagreeing without humiliating. Practice remembering that there is an actual human being standing in front of you, or sitting somewhere on the other side of that screen. Practice disagreeing without humiliating. Before you hit POST, imagine saying those exact words while looking into the other person’s eyes.
Practice tremendous empathy, particularly toward people whose lives you do not understand.
Help people who need help, because, in truth, we all sort of need help. 
That is not simply a prescription for government. It is a pretty good prescription for being a human being.
And just when I thought I was gonna end this essay, I realized here is where it gets complicated for me: Michelle Obama famously said, “When they go low, we go high.”
I love the aspiration, and many of the leaders I most admire tried to live by some version of it. But there is a hard reality here: when Trump and some of his  Republican political allies use ridicule, personal attacks, congressional hearings, falsehoods and deliberately inflammatory language as Heartfall and mendacious political weapons, simply “going high” feels woefully inadequate.
Decency cannot mean standing politely on the sidelines while someone else is willing to fight without the same restraints.
Going high must not mean refusing to fight. Maybe going high needs to mean fighting every bit as hard, but refusing to become cruel in the process.
There are moments when democracy, decency and basic human rights require confrontation. We have faced such moments before. When fascism consumed Europe, the answer was not simply to remain polite and hope that hatred would exhaust itself. Free nations fought back, while trying to remain clear about what they were fighting for: liberty, human dignity and a free world.
On the eve of D-Day, Dwight Eisenhower told the men about to storm Europe that their mission was the elimination of Nazi tyranny and security in “a free world.” And then he made clear that moral purpose did not mean timidity: “We will accept nothing less than full Victory!”
Sometimes standing for decency requires more than being decent. Sometimes you have to fight like hell for it. There are lies that must be called lies. There are abuses of power that must be resisted fiercely. There are people who will interpret endless politeness not as decency but as weakness.
So maybe the choice isn’t between going high and getting down in the mud.
Maybe the challenge is to fight like hell without becoming what you are fighting.
Be fierce about principles and careful about people.
Attack the lie, not someone’s face. Expose corruption without mocking somebody’s body. Challenge racism without deciding that everyone who disagrees with you is irredeemably evil. Protest. Organize. Vote. Take them to court. Sue. Investigate. March. Write. Sing. Speak. Shout when shouting is necessary.
But don’t surrender your humanity in order to defend humanity.
Kindness does not require weakness.
Civility does not require surrender.
Empathy does not require agreement.
Listening does not mean changing your convictions.
And refusing to hate someone does not require allowing that person to hurt others.
That is the line we have to learn to walk if we are going to protect ourselves from the threat posed by an increasingly authoritarian right, but also from something much closer to home: what social media is doing to the way we treat one another. We have to learn how to fight fiercely for what we believe is right without surrendering to the cruelty, contempt, humiliation and dehumanization that we are fighting against in the first place.
Because democracy depends on conflict. People are supposed to disagree. Sometimes passionately. What democracy cannot survive indefinitely is contempt: the conviction that the people on the other side aren’t merely wrong but worthless, stupid, disgusting or less human than we are.
And social media gives every one of us a major broadcasting network capable of spreading either contempt or understanding. So let’s use it for something good.
Let’s use it to listen, to encourage, to make somebody laugh, to stand up for somebody who needs us, to disagree without destroying one another, and every once in a while, perhaps, to change somebody’s mind.
Imagine what might happen if millions of us made that choice.
You may say I’m a dreamer, but I know I’m not the only one. 
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