James Sayers:
Cicero in Catilinam
(March 17, 1785)

"It's been an awfully expensive civics lesson."

Our incumbent brought not a new concept into our politics, but a demeaning focus. Tradition insisted that mutual respect best brought The People together, and that from that foundation, anything might prove possible. Our incumbent brought a tangible crudeness into the conversation instead. He routinely said, if not necessarily the unspeakable, then the previously unmentionable. The stark difference between unspeakability and unmentionability lies in that very mutual respect I mentioned. The unspeakable describes the difficult-to-acknowledge, often some hard-to-swallow-yet-inescapable truth, while the unmentionable involves stuff not really worth bringing into any conversation, the stuff that never advances anything decent. I might mention an unspeakable to open up some previously unexplored potential. Anybody dabbling in mentioning unmentionables comes across as crude: undisciplined and disrespectful.

The primary impact our incumbent has had on our politics has been his influence in making it decidedly cruder than it had been before. He routinely mentioned shit that reasonable people have long understood was absolutely unmentionable because those topics could only throw relationships into the gutter. The unmentionable reminds me of Mark Twain’s famous quip describing the primary difference between a person and a jackass. He concludes that there are some things a jackass just won’t do under any circumstances. Not so the human, and that seems to go double for our haplessly incorrigible incumbent. There’s apparently nothing he won’t do for fun, profit, or temporary political advantage, or to inflict some temporary political disadvantage on an opponent. He’s proven himself eminently capable of torching his bridges, just to make some spectacle, even if he undermines his only means of advancing or retreating in the process. He revels in dispensing careless cruelty that couldn’t possibly advance anybody’s interests. He routinely says and does the utterly unmentionable and seems to revel in this.

He lowered the bar. He undermined what had served as a reasonably solid foundation for political argument. He took to assigning demeaning nicknames to each of his opponents. In true bully fashion, he unleashed his potty mouth regardless of who was present to witness: children, clergy, war heroes, mothers, conservative Christians with delicate sensibilities; he didn’t seem to care. His behavior encouraged a discernible downward trend in political discourse as a definite crudeness intruded on what had formerly sometimes bordered on genuine deliberation. He acknowledged no differences of opinion, but only greater wrongs to his wrongly asserted rights. He blithely asserted anything that came to mind, slinging mud and horseshit with equal aplomb. He’d let loose with another F-bomb, and eventually, nobody would even respond. His arguments lost most of their effectiveness because he delivered them in such a juvenile fashion. “I know you are, but what am I?” became an integral part of his new political diatribe.

We tribed up. Some took inspiration from the incumbent, who wasn’t afraid to bring up the formerly absolutely unmentionable. They felt liberated by the sudden freedom to demean anyone. They claimed a God-given right to say whatever they goddamned pleased to anyone at any time, and thereby divorced themselves from the ranks of decent people, proudly insisting upon becoming unwashed Others instead. The level of political discourse fell further than ever before, or further than anyone then alive could remember. Even the loyal opposition was sorely tempted to jump into the gutter, if only to try to set the crooked record straighter. Repeated attempts to recover the former level of argument would ultimately convince his opposition that no Rosetta Stone could translate the unmentionable into the reasonable, or the reasonable into messaging that had any chance of getting through to the unmentionablers.

If a single, certain fast-track method for achieving obsolescence exists, it must be paved with Disrespect. If you’re ever absolutely aching for a Comeuppance, Disrespect will get you one the fastest. People can better tolerate almost any other insult, but Disrespect reliably blasts the paint off civil engagement. It leaves us worse off than wild animals, our social structures and sustaining conventions in absolute tatters. No discourse capable of refining Disrespectful comments ever existed, or could. They telegraph nothing other than their utterer couldn’t care less about maintaining relationships. Disrespectful actions speak louder than any Disrespectful words. When our incumbent’s Secretary of Defensiveness and some staff stopped by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Veterans’ Day to take selfies and giggle at each other, the guard screamed at them to show respect at all times there. They disappeared like the snickering children they apparently were, never to apologize for trespassing in the most sacred space in our civil society. Nobody was the least bit surprised when this happened, for it merely exemplified the Disrespect our incumbents’ entire cabinet has been showing The People since they started their effort to avoid administering anything at all costs. It’s been an awfully expensive civics lesson.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz