How Did America Lose its Civility? [View all]

The brutal, noisy wrestling match that American politics and public discourse have become in the Trump era has recently stunned me into silence and sadness and nearly sapped my ability to write about life in the Italian village where I now make my home and where civility survives.

It’s also impossible not to take stock and dwell for a moment on the contrast between today’s America and that of the bygone society where I was raised, educated, and had a career.

For the first three decades of my life, I lived in six distinctly different parts of the country, including three of which would today be called red states — Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Alaska — and four blue states — California, Minnesota, Washington, and New York. Each of them had unique and often tragic histories, diverse populations, and differing choices in daily life.

Regardless of the many cultural differences, they exhibited three traits in common: empathy for other people, civility in public discourse, a strong sense of community.

https://www.postalley.org/2025/07/24/how-did-america-lose-its-civility/

Rush Limbaugh and other right wing talk radio was probably the start.