https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/its-too-late-for-civility-in-american-politics/

For all of the power the Trump administration has been able to exercise in ripping apart some families and detaining others indefinitely, it is apparently overmatched by the indignity of being made uncomfortable in public.

First there was Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security whose quiet work dinner at MXDC Cocina Mexicana, a Mexican restaurant, was rudely interrupted by a mob of hecklers. Only a few days prior, Nielsen delivered a shockingly deceitful press conference, denying that Customs and Border Protection was separating children from their parents in order to deter future asylum-seekers, something that John Kelly, her predecessor and Trump’s current chief of staff, had long since affirmed was the case. Nielsen later tweeted: “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.” While the tweet was true, in the sense that no official U.S. policy existed to rip children out of their parents’ arms and shuttle them into foster care, it was happening nonetheless to mostly Mexican families. For that, Nielsen—who must have been famished after days spent catapulting her employer’s propaganda—was chased from her fancy table by an angry crowd chanting “shame” behind her.

Then, over the weekend, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave the Red Hen Restaurant in Lexington, Va., drawing comparisons to the rampant segregation at restaurants and lunch counters before the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. And according to a story from Politico, outing oneself as a Trump staffer has apparently proven to be a surefire way to get rejected on dating apps in D.C.

Some American conservatives have long agitated to deny others their rights, from women seeking birth control, to same sex-couples seeking to get married, and to transgender women seeking the basic dignity of using the bathroom unaccosted. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee calls the Red Hen’s treatment of his daughter “bigotry,” yet cheers when a same-sex couple is denied a marriage license. And yet, in the name of civility—which must take priority over other people’s basic human rights if we want to keep reasonable discourse alive—we must not cause discomfort to the handmaidens of fascism. Sanders’s braveness in the face of Americans fed up with this bigoted and shameless administration was no less than a modern-day version of the Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-ins.