American political rhetoric is sliding towards the sewer

MOST adults know all the words that will appear in this column. But they may still be shocked to hear them used in public, even distinguished, places. Robert De Niro won a standing ovation at the recent Tony Awards for shouting “Fuck Trump!” Samantha Bee, in a tirade on her comedy news show against Donald Trump’s immigration policy, called Ivanka Trump, his daughter, a “feckless cunt”. Their main target responded as usual, punching back at “no talent Samantha Bee” and “Robert De Niro, a very Low IQ individual” on Twitter.

Of course the great pioneer of vulgar political language sits in the Oval Office. During his campaign in 2016, Mr Trump promised to “bomb the shit” out of Islamic State, said voters should tell firms that move overseas to “go fuck themselves”, and smirkingly repeated an audience member’s dismissal of an opponent as “a pussy”. Mr Trump said that a female journalist who had asked him tough questions had “blood coming out of her wherever”. In office, he has derided immigration from “shithole” countries.

His opponents, flummoxed by his popularity, have sometimes tried to imitate him. It never works, but they never learn. When Marco Rubio, a rival for the Republican nomination, took a puerile potshot at the size of Mr Trump’s hands—“you know what they say about a man with small hands”—Mr Trump breezily defended his genitals at the next debate. Mr Rubio was demeaned; Mr Trump cruised on. When Michelle Wolf, a comedian, delivered a foul-mouthed routine attacking the president—“the one pussy you’re not allowed to grab”—at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April, her crudeness was more widely discussed than her wit (and there were indeed some good jokes in there).

In fact, the language of politics has been growing more informal for half a century. The 1960s and 1970s—which featured assassinations, Watergate and Vietnam in America, and left-wing uprisings in Europe—led people to mistrust their “betters” and their lofty, crafted rhetoric. Television, seeming to close the physical distance between viewers and viewed, rewarded an intimate, apparently genuine style in which politicians sounded like their voters, not above them. The impersonality and spontaneity of social media, which are edging out newspapers in news delivery, is fuelling the trend.

This is not only an American phenomenon. Russia’s Vladimir Putin once vowed to pursue terrorists everywhere—even “in the shithouse”. Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has called both Barack Obama and the pope a “son of a whore”. Both presidents remain popular in their countries, practising a rhetorical form of violence alongside the physical kind.

But in America the combination of vulgarity with the country’s extreme polarisation is producing a toxic mix. Politicians and public figures are literally dehumanising their adversaries. Mr Trump has called some illegal immigrants “animals” and said they are “infesting” America. Roseanne Barr, an actress, called Valerie Jarrett, a black adviser to Mr Obama, an offspring of the film “Planet of the Apes”. Michael Avenatti, a lawyer who is suing the president, called one of Mr Trump’s lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, a “pig”; New York magazine depicted Mr Trump as a pig on its cover. It is not altogether panicky to note that genocides are preceded by dehumanisation: the Nazis and the Rwandan genocidaires called their victims vermin. If your opponents are pigs or apes, it is worth doing almost anything to keep them from power.

America has entered a rhetorical vicious circle that may be impossible to escape. During the election of 2016 Michelle Obama, then the First Lady, said that “when they go low, we go high.” Those grand words have withered in the heat of the new era. Neither side is willing to stand down unilaterally in an escalating war of words. In this climate, Democrats will have little cause for complaint when the vilest of language is flung at their nominee in 2020.

Is the country of Lincoln, MLK and JFK on an irreversible slide towards the rhetoric of the sewer? In 2016 many voters wanted a candidate who reflected their anger. Today many are troubled by the tone of debate, too. The problem is that, even if they prefer civil politics in general, they want the toughest possible fighter on their side. If they continue rewarding loathsome language, they should prepare to hear a lot more of it.