Mitch Albom’s Right

From USAToday:

Think about the words [Maxine Waters] told her supporters to use: “You’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” At a time when her biggest issues include immigration, racial injustice, and LGBTQ rights, is that really a sentence she wants to invoke?

It’s tough but simple. You can’t play dirty and complain about the other side playing dirty. You can’t show disrespect and claim you’re being disrespected. Waters, on Friday, bemoaned having to cancel two events out of threats to her safety. Such threats, if made, are wrong and illegal. But can she be surprised? Did she think encouraging her supporters to harass public officials wouldn’t spread like a fire to the other side?

We are now in a time when the head of Homeland Security is jeered publicly in a restaurant, and an intern for a Democratic Senator, working at the Capitol, can yell “Mr. President, F—  you!” after Trump passes by, yet receive no worse than a one-week suspension.

A one week suspension? Yes. And her boss, Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, told the news media that the intern, a young woman, “accepted responsibility (for her actions)” while Trump has not.

This is a common defense. Trump is crude, a bully, uncivil, mean. It’s not us. He started it!

We used to say the same thing in grade school.

Teaching young people that it’s not so bad to curse out the president, teaching restaurant owners that it’s OK to toss customers for being on the other side of your politics, telling supporters that you should get ugly with any member of an administration you don’t like, isn’t going to get us away from an uncivil leader.

It’s only going to make us more like him.

That may not warrant a dunce cap, but you can’t really call it smart behavior, either.