They call their efforts to build bridges over the cries of children civil; their patience civil; and their belief in the electoral process civil.

They picture today’s brutal boxing as new, changing history to match their political philosophy. They claim Trump thrust Americans into the ring of ugly confrontation. They pose as the liberators of Americans from incivility, and urge Americans to join them on high, in not stooping down to the level of Trump.

But the moderates can’t seem to recognize a critical truism: What makes someone like Trump is not whether someone is engaging in political confrontation and harassment, but who and what someone is politically confronting and harassing. Are they harassing the oppressed like Trump, or harassing the oppressors?

Political confrontation and harassment is as civil as it is American. Evading confrontation as the children cry, as their oppressors cry for more cries, is as uncivil as it is un-American. Instead of encircling political confrontation and harassment in incivility, we should be recognizing the dividing line in American politics—a line that has continuously changed American history for better or worse, always to the chagrin of the gradual or do-nothing moderate Americans. The dividing line in American politics is constructive or destructive political confrontation and harassment.

Today moderates are again whiting out this dividing line, and instead drawing a line between uncivil harassers and civil unifiers. They are instructing their Republican and Democratic peers to step out of the ring of confrontation.

Over the weekend, Waters said on MSNBC that “the people are going to turn” on the members of the Trump administration. “They’re going to protest. They’re going to absolutely harass them until they decide that they’re going to tell the president, ‘No, I can’t hang with you.’”

To harass, by definition, is “to disturb persistently; torment, as with troubles or cares; bother continually; pester; persecute.” But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi could not hang with her Democratic colleague on this. “We must strive to make America beautiful again,” she tweeted Tuesday morning. “Trump’s daily lack of civility has provoked responses that are predictable but unacceptable. As we go forward, we must conduct elections in a way that achieves unity from sea to shining sea.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Shumer added later in the day, “No one should call for the harassment of political opponents. That’s not right. That’s not American.”

Harassing political opponents is fully American and American history is full of it. If my ideological ancestors did not harass their political opponents, I would still be enslaved. I would still be segregated by law. I would still be one traffic stop away from death without any sustained movement insisting that my black life matters.