Seriously, Mr. Eckstrom?

Few people would disagree with Lexington County Probate Judge Dan Eckstrom's diagnosis of America's political culture and civil discourse as being "especially toxic."

I certainly don't.

However, his recent op-ed column (The Cayce-West Columbia News, March 23, 2017, p.2) was bewildering at best. In it, in he makes a valiant but strikingly partisan attempt to date the origin of our present, loathsome lack of civility per public discourse as being November 9, 2017--the day Donald Trump was elected president.

To his credit, he allows that "deep divisions existed long prior" to the election of our 45th president. But any credibility that allowance afforded him is lost when he disingenuously--better, absurdly--claims that the present toxicity of our public discourse is worse than that which existed "long prior" and that it is "primarily driven by those unhappy with the outcome of that election."

In response, I can only use a semi-word I reserve for statements that ask me to spend a moment in the alternate reality of "alternative facts": "Whaaaa?"

Does Mr. Eckstrom have a partisan agenda he wants to push or he has been in an ahistorical coma for the past 37 years? Either way, he would help himself by firming up his grasp of American political history--past, immediately past and present.

However, in the interests of space and time, we'll forego--with two exceptions--discussion of the last 37 or 100 or 235 years or so and stick with the immediate past/present.

To wit...

Along with "those unhappy with the outcome" of the 2016 presidential election, Mr. Eckstrom considers "identity politics" to be a prime contributor to the venomous quality of present-day civil discourse. And, in the process of attaching blame to "identity politics," he predictably points an accusatory finger at another favorite Republican/Conservative punching bag/straw man--"the national media."

Quick history lesson: The "national media"--or, for that matter, the local media--may report, educate and even comment/opine per what Mr. Eckstrom terms "identity politics," but the media does not generate it.

The Women's Suffrage Movement, initiated in 1869 by Susan B. Anthony and culminating 51 years later in the adoption of the 19th Amendment, is most certainly an example of "identity politics," but it was most certainly not generated by "the national media."

It was generated by millions of women rightly protesting that the same privileges and rights guaranteed to men and protected for men by the United States Constitution were being denied them--in particular, the right to free, unobstructed access to the ballot. The national media did what we count on responsible journalism to do--it reported on the movement, educated the country about it and offered informed commentary/opinion relative to it.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 culminated a long, difficult and often bloodied movement on the part of black citizens to secure for themselves the rights and privileges guaranteed to them and protected for them by the United States Constitution--in particular, as was the case with the suffrage movement, the right to free, unobstructed access to the ballot. (A right and privilege that many on the conservative side of the political divide are still attempting to deny them by a panoply of voter suppression efforts.)

The movement to secure the franchise for black citizens--guaranteed them by the 15th and 19th Amendments--was, like the Women's Suffrage Movement, most certainly an example of "identity politics." But, like the latter, it was not media-generated. It arose out of the communal frustration of millions of black Americans who simply grew tired of being denied rights that were inherently theirs as citizens of this country.

The delicious irony of Mr. Eckstrom's jihad against "identity politics" and "the national media" is that the dynamics of the 2016 election cycle indicate rather clearly that no one was more responsible for the elevating the temperature of "identity politics" than the man who now lives part-time in the White House.

Seriously, was there any candidate who more often and in more disparaging terms raised and demagogued issues of class, race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, gender and sexual orientation than Donald Trump?

Nothing--certainly not "identity politics" nor "the national media"--and no one is more responsible for the demoralizing incivility of public discourse both before and after the November election than Donald Trump, who has proven himself to be an appallingly crude, cruel demagogue.

And I'm being kind. And restrained.

Need I remind Mr. Eckstrom that his presidential choice spent five years blatantly and knowingly trying to delegitimize the presidency of Barack Obama--our first black president--by passing a string of lies and complete falsehoods about the "birthplace" of the man who is now his predecessor.

"Identity politics," anyone?

He began his seedy, racist barrage of false insinuations on his favorite vehicle for making fevered, false insinuations--Twitter. He repeated it on television, asking a panel on "The View," "Why doesn't he show his birth certificate?" FOX News was always willing to listen to his dark musings--"I want to see his birth certificate," he said to the hosts of "On The Record." In 2014 he went so far as to ask Twitter followers to "hack Obama's college records (destroyed?) and check 'place of birth.'"

[Query: What are we to make of Trump occasionally beseeching his low-information voter base to engage in the illegality of hacking the online accounts of those he considers his "enemies?"]

Over time, fellow Birthers, encouraged by Trump's participation in their Fake News operation, developed a delusional conspiracy theory worthy of Roger Stone (and still pushed by Roger Stone): Barack Obama's presidency was "illegitimate" because he was "born in Kenya to a Muslim father" and "planted in Hawaii" by Muslim radicals in order that he might one day be elected president and convert the United States into an Islamic country wherein Sharia Law would be practiced.

Trump refused to back away from any of it. Neither did he ever produce a shred of evidence to substantiate the lie--but, then, a lie, by nature, cannot be substantiated by evidence, a lesson Donald Trump has taught us time and again.

When President Obama finally threw his hands up and produced his birth certificate--certified as authentic by the State of Hawaii--Trump, of course, characterized it as a forgery.

He claimed to have "investigators in Hawaii who are coming up with some interesting things." We then, unsurprisingly, discovered that he never had "investigators" investigating anything, anywhere.

And, when the man who can never admit he is wrong finally admitted he was wrong he unsurprisingly blamed it, of course, on Hillary Clinton.

He then, incredibly, sought credit for bringing his own sad string of lies to an end: "She began it [the Birther Movement], I ended it. They should be thanking me."

Trying to follow his twists and turns, lies and dissembling per this issue was likely to send one to the ER for treatment of mental whiplash. It sent the Washington Post fact-checkers looking for Four Pinocchios and the fact-checkers at PolitiFact looking for a bucket of water to extinguish that pair of Pants-on-Fire.

I am, by the way, unaware of any past or present effort to suchly delegitimize Mr. Trump's presidency by lying about his background. His background--excepting those tax returns he won't release, the sealed court documents per his numerous settlements with plaintiffs, and the details of his business and political dealings with his BFF, Shirtless Vlady, and a bushel of Russian oligarchs--is there for all to wrinkle their noses at and be horrified by.

This is the man Mr. Eckstrom is defending.

Incivility in public discourse?

Donald Trump took juvenile pleasure in attaching pejorative names to his campaign opponents.

During the primary campaign, there was "Little Marco," "Lyin' Ted," "Low-Energy Jeb," etc.

During the general campaign, there was "Crooked Hillary" and "Lyin' Hillary," both monikers reaching the heights of adjectival irony given Trump's long history of fraudulent business practices and the brutal analyses by fact-checkers of Trump's "lyin'" and dissembling throughout the election cycle.

Incivility in public discourse?

Donald Trump trotted out a series of lies about the father of Ted Cruz, the most heinous being that Mr. Cruz--of whom I am certainly no fan--had known Lee Harvey Oswald and been part of a conspiracy that led to the assassination of John Kennedy.

He lied about "thousands of Muslims in New Jersey" cheering "from the rooftops" when the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed on 9/11.

He then, in front of thousands of frenzied rally-goers in South Carolina, cruelly mocked a disabled journalist who had the temerity to call him out on that anti-Muslim lie.

He mocked and, in an egregious display of disrespect, tried to humiliate the Gold Star parents of a young Army officer who died heroically in Iraq--because they and he were Muslims.

Speaking to another frenzied group of rally-goers, he smeared Hispanics/Latinos as a group by playing the demagogue and referencing undocumented persons coming across the southern border as "rapists, murderers, gang members," etc. He also publicly disparaged a member of the federal judiciary as being biased against him because "he's Mexican, you know."

Both pre- and post-election, Donald Trump held rallies at which he, in a most un-presidential way, led acolytes in cheers such as "Lock her up! Lock her up!" and "Build that Wall! Build that Wall!" And who, furthermore, literally penned up the press at the back of meeting halls, inviting rally-goers to turn and hurl all manner of invectives and threats at them.

And then, of course, there was the videotape of Trump--a serial adulterer and misogynist--laughingly and in graphic terms admitting to sexual assault and further admitting that he purposefully walked into dressing rooms filled with nude, teenage girls who were taking part in pageants he owned.

In neither speech, manner, tone nor action was/is Donald Trump inspirational, aspirational or a model of civility.

Indeed, he is the opposite of each.

Worse, the incivility of Donald Trump's discourse and actions has seemingly ramped up since his inauguration. He continues to lie without ceasing--about the size of his hands, the size of his election victory (he lost the popular vote by 2.8 million votes), the size of his inauguration crowd, the "three to five million illegal votes" cast (all of them for Secretary Clinton, not one for for him)--and continues to attack those who call him out for it. He has further weaponized Twitter, going so far as to disparage yet another federal judge and falsely accuse his predecessor of putting "wire tapps" on his Trump Tower phones, characterizing Barack Obama as being "Bad (or sick)." And he continues to either misrepresent facts or simply lie about his "many accomplishments" since taking office.

We have never seen the likes of Donald Trump. And hopefully never will again.

Mr. Eckstrom did us all a service in pointing out the ugly nature of current political discourse. But he did us a disservice by looking at its roots through such a partisan lens.

A serious and more helpful consideration of a subject so volatile might require less devotion to Donald Trump and more understanding of how, through indecency and incivility magnified, he has managed to widen rather than bridge the divides in America's body politic. And, how he continues to do so.

[Worth Noting: Space prevents a discussion about Mr. Eckstrom's pejorative mention of "hate speech" in relation to the "disinviting" of speakers to college/university campuses. He, of course, engages in some serious cherry-picking of examples and, in the process, clouds that discussion. I am more than interested in responding to his comments per that matter and will do so in a future column.]