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But the current era of political obscenity also must be put in historical context. Privately, presidentsranging from Abraham Lincoln to Richard Nixonwere prone to use off-color language. But in public, their political rhetoric was loftier, aiming to be more sacred than profane. When America was on the cusp of the Civil War, Lincoln in his inaugural address evoked the better angels of our nature and the mystic chords of memory. Behind closed doors, though, Lincoln could be as coarse as anyone,and had a predilection for potty humor.

The novelist Norman Mailer was a pioneer in breaking down the division between private language and political speech. In 1969, he ran for New York mayor under the slogan No More Bullshit. He lost, but his political career shouldnt be dismissed as a Quixotic gesture. As a writer, Mailer was attuned to the fact that culture was changing. In his first novel,The Naked and the Dead (1948), he had to replace fuck with the euphemism fug. (According to a famous butapocryphalstory, Dorothy Parker asked Mailer if he was the young man who couldnt spell fuck.) By the late 1960s, due to the weakening of censorship laws, Mailer was allowed to swear all he wanted in his novels. Mailer concluded, accurately although prematurely, that foul language would soon have a place in politics.

The release of the Watergate tapes in 1974 did much to discredit Nixon in the eyes of his conservative supporters,especially since the tapes were littered with four-letter words rendered by newspapers as expletive deleted.The Chicago Tribune, which had long championed Nixon and then called for his resignation, lamented, He is devious. He is vacillating. He is profane.Yet the tapes seem to have opened the doors for greater acceptance of swearing in politics. Once it became know the f-bomb was commonplace in the Oval Office, politicians were freed from unrealistic expectations of public decorousness.Jimmy Carter ran as asqueakyclean alternative to the sordid Nixonian, but in 1979 hesaidof his political rival Ted Kennedy, Ill whip his ass.

The increasing obscenity in politics has a political salience. The word vulgarity is rooted in the Latin term for the multitude; to use coarse language is to speak in the tongue of the common people, and to reject the code of civility prescribedif not always followedby the political ruling class. Trump swore on the campaign trail to establish his populist bona fides and connect with the working class, while at the same timedistinguishing himself from typical Republicans like Jeb Bush, thehigh-minded WASP,or Mitt Romney, theprim Mormon. Trumps foul language showed his followers that he was serious about breaking the rules to upend the establishment.

Democrats use of profanity projects a comparable message. Foul words often come from politicians who are already populists or hope to be seen as such (Gillibrand, Sanders, Perez). And swearing has intensified as Democrats have become more recalcitrant in their resistance to the president. Just as Trump cursed as a way of rejecting the Obama-era politics of 2016, Democrats are now cursing as a way of rejecting the Trumpian politics of 2017. To call bullshit is to renounce compromise or a search for comity. It means you are raring for a fight. To yell obscenities at the president is to say that his politics are themselves obscene.

Excerpt from:
Democrats Should Swear More at Donald Trump - New Republic