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Unfortunately, those who should be leading the effort to return some civility to public discourse have been slithering off in the opposite direction.

The hate in the messages comes through loud and clear. In Jansen’s case it is aimed at the fact she happens to be a woman, though there were swipes at “queers” and lesbians as well. Jansen issued a plea for fellow politicians to fight the poison of such comments. “Please oppose it. Don’t ignore it. Don’t look the other way. Don’t excuse it. Our daughters are watching us. They are watching the challenges facing women in politics today.”

Both her anger and her request are wholly justified and deserving of support. But gender-hatred is just a subset of the ignorance that characterizes so much of what passes for public discourse in the age of emails, Twitter, Facebook and the like. Any male foolish enough to raise his head above the parapet of public awareness comes in for just as much moronic abuse, much of it poorly spelled, shockingly ill-informed and of questionable grammar. It’s long past time to fight back against the malevolence and abuse that drips from the Internet like a toxic sludge. We have been far too tolerant of intolerance; everyone has a right to state their views, but a civil society strives to rise above the lowest standards of which humans are capable.

Unfortunately, those who should be leading the effort to return some civility to public discourse have been slithering off in the opposite direction. The U.S. presidential election set a modern low for public displays of vulgarity and boorishness by both major parties. The relative dignity with which Donald Trump has comported himself since the campaign ended raises the worrying possibility that at least a portion of the ugliness was a deliberate strategy, inspired perhaps by the belief that politics has become so loutish a profession that a direct appeal to its coarseness was the surest path to victory.