City Club of Boise Virtual Conversation: Striving for Civility in Fractured Times
Wed, Aug 25
|online
Civility has been at the heart of the City Club of Boise’s mission for more than two and a half decades, and a specific topic of conversation since our 20th Anniversary in 2015. But what lies ahead for political and civic discourse in our state? Join us online for a panel discussion.
Time & Location
Aug 25, 2021, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM MDT
online
About the Event
In December of 2016, Foreign Policy noted that “the U.S. presidential campaign set a new low for civility and reasoned discourse.” But newer lows would keep coming. By the end of 2020, an L.A. Times columnist was asking “Will the 2020 presidential campaign turn out to be the low point in modern political civility?”
Many Americans hope so.
But in Idaho in the ensuing months, the GOP lieutenant governor undermined her fellow Republican governor’s approach to the pandemic on a day he was out of the state and she had gubernatorial powers. Legislative leaders forced a young staffer who had reported that a lawmaker had raped her to testify in public, as some legislators outed her name to the public in an attempt to protect their fellow conservative.
And that was just in the Statehouse. Elsewhere, protestors have targeted the homes of elected officials and even a magistrate judge. The…