Stephen Henderson: The President’s Tweets Are Racist. Now, How Do We Respond?
Detroit Today hosts a conversation about civility in the Trump era and how to respond in-kind without lowering our own standards.
No one should be surprised by the tweets President Donald Trump unleashed over the weekend, telling several progressive minority Congresswomen that they ought to “go back to” the countries they came from.
It was also factually incorrect and well beyond the bounds of reasonable discussion or discourse. How are we supposed to answer this kind of assault?
The instinct is to insult Trump or to unleash on his followers. We’ve seen in the past how that works, though. It’s what he wants, and what his supporters relish, in many cases. And he has been wildly, and dangerously, successful at lowering the overall quality of debate since he began his run for president.. So where does that leave us? What should we be saying in answer to this? And how do we condemn the president’s racism without contributing to the downward slide he has our politics on?
Carolyn Lukensmeyer, executive director emeritus of nonpartisan National Institute for Civil Discourse is here to answer our questions about responding to the toxic debate that has unfolded.
