Political Leadership in 2017 (a/k/a Defining Deviancy Down)

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is the latest reminder of an unfortunate lesson the Democrats have drawn from President Trump's election: show your populist streak by swearing more in your speeches.

Jeet Heer now argues in the New Republic that we need more of this, not less: 

The new wave of swearing isn’t the cause of a breakdown in civility, but a symptom of a national crisis. These are dire times in the U.S. The president is a manifestly unfit kleptocrat who may have obstructed justice, but he’s not going to be impeached anytime soon because he has the support of his party. The only proper response is a full-scale attack on the political system, which requires rallying the public by letting them know just how foul things are—a task best accomplished with foul language. Trump represents an existential threat to American democracy. In this state of emergency, there’s no room for wimpy euphemisms and lofty rhetoric.

Lovely.  Nothing is off limits, of course, because we have never faced such an existential threat to our political system!  A leader could invoke "the better angels of our nature" in 1861 because that leader probably knew nothing about national division and discord.  If that leader had ever encountered a Trump-sized threat, he'd have been invoking fewer angels and dropping more F-bombs.  And why raise a hand to stop the demolition of traditional norms of civility -- norms that, I feel obliged to point out, bear no culpability for the economic dislocation at the root of our current "anti-establishment" moment -- when we can grab a sledgehammer and join in the fun?

Well, at least the election has caused Democrats to rethink their litmus test on abortion rights.  Oh wait.