Comment is not altogether civil

I have, for a rarity, some sympathy with this piece by Madeleine Bunting. It does rather chime in with her general misery about the state of the society she lives in, but someone who thinks everything is bad will be right on occasion if some things are bad. Bunting is worried about the decline in public civility and I'd say she has a point, though all I have to go on in this regard are the impressions of 45 years of living in England, and not any evidence based on methodical research.

Having set down this point of agreement, I would express one qualification to it. As is usual for her, Bunting's mode of critical reflection is a kind of low level 'sociologese', if I may so put it: like... this is what's been happening, these are the trends, 'we' no longer this or don't do enough of that. As for either a policy or some rules of conduct that might correct or at least address the problem under review, as for a more active and less hand-wringing approach, Bunting has less to offer. Thus, it is notable that she highlights the relevance of what she's talking about to lack of civility on the internet:

Aggression, abuse and contempt are now the normal currency of debate among strangers on blogs... [p]ublic debate on the internet is being strangled at birth by the quantity of personal abuse and bullying.

And there's more along the same lines. Bunting, however, speaks of this in a purely 'external' way, when she herself is a blogger of sorts, if only on an occasional basis. And the place where she blogs - Comment is Free - is among the very worst examples in the blogosphere of what is permitted by way of abusive comment. This is not just a matter of a general sociological trend, therefore; it is also about what is tolerated - as policy - and then about the culture of comment that those who participate on a site are willing to go along with.