Do We Have to Be Assholes About Everything?

I was sitting in a coffee shop this morning, the kind of place where everyone pretends they’re working but mostly just watches the world move around them.

My coffee had already cooled down to that in-between temperature where you keep sipping it even though you know it’s past its prime. My scarf was doing its job — coffee shops are always either too warm or slightly freezing — and I had my laptop open like I was going to be productive.

Mostly I was just listening.

Not on purpose. The room was just… full of conversation.

Two people at the table behind me were talking about something political. I couldn’t even tell you what the topic was anymore, because what caught my attention wasn’t the subject.

It was the tone.

They weren’t yelling. They weren’t angry.

But every sentence still sounded like a fight.

One of them would say something thoughtful and the other would respond with:

“Yeah, but…”

Then the first would clarify.

Then the second would correct.

Then both of them would tighten up just a little more, like they were squaring their shoulders before the next round.

The strange part was that they seemed to agree about most of it.

But they still talked like opponents.

After a few minutes I realized something that made me a little sad.

This wasn’t just them.

It was everywhere.

Another table was doing it.

Someone on a phone call near the counter was doing it.

Even the comments section of an article I had open on my laptop was doing it.

Everyone sounded like they were defending themselves before anyone had actually attacked them.

And once I noticed it, I couldn’t un-notice it.

So I opened my notebook and wrote the first question that came to mind.

Do we have to be assholes about everything?

I’m not asking rhetorically.

I mean it literally.

Not the joking kind. Not the gallows humor. Not the sarcasm you use to survive a bad day. I mean the reflex. The knee-jerk hostility. The way every conversation now seems to start with disbelief, contempt, or some variation of what the hell is wrong with you.

Even when we agree.

Especially when we agree.

Every statement gets answered with no, but. Every idea is treated like a threat. Every question arrives already armored, as if curiosity itself has become a liability. Nobody enters a conversation wondering what they might learn. They enter braced for impact, fists half-raised, prepared to win.

It’s exhausting.

And what makes it worse is that it doesn’t even seem to be about disagreement anymore.

It’s about posture.

About proving that you are alert enough to see the danger immediately. About signaling that you’re not naive, not soft, not behind the times. That you’re sharp enough to catch the problem before anyone else finishes speaking.

So we skip the question.

We go straight to the counterpunch.

Our political system was built with friction in mind. Debate, disagreement, argument — those were supposed to be features. The idea was that people would push against each other and sharpen ideas in the process.

Friction was meant to create heat.

Not fire.

Somewhere along the way, though, it feels like we decided the friction itself was the point.

Now every conversation feels like a test of dominance. Even agreement gets wrapped in arguments. Even when we change our minds — even when we walk away thinking they’re right — we still argue all the way to the door like conceding without a fight would somehow make us smaller.

And I keep wondering why.

What are we so afraid of losing?

Because most of these conversations aren’t really about policy anymore. They’re about identity. Belonging. Respect.

About whether you look serious enough, informed enough, or dangerous enough to be heard.

And in that kind of environment, being gentle starts to feel like disappearing.

So we sharpen everything.

We assume bad faith.

We preload anger.

We respond not to what someone said, but to what we’re afraid it might imply if we don’t push back immediately.

We’ve trained ourselves to live in a defensive crouch.

But a culture can’t stay there forever.

Constant outrage burns energy without producing clarity. It turns conversations into performances and disagreements into spectacles. It makes curiosity look weak and patience look suspicious.

And after a while, something inside the whole thing starts to feel hollow.

We forget how to ask real questions.

We forget how to listen without already preparing a rebuttal.

We forget how to give an idea enough breathing room to see whether it’s actually dangerous or just unfamiliar.

I don’t think this makes us cruel.

I think it makes us tired.

Tired of being misunderstood.

Tired of being talked past.

Tired of watching institutions fail and feeling like the only power we have left is volume.

But volume isn’t strength.

And anger, when it becomes automatic, stops being a tool and starts being a habit.

I don’t have a clean solution for that. I wish I did.

But I do keep wondering what would happen if we started a little lower.

Not with certainty.

Not with accusation.

Just with the genuine attempt to understand what the other person is actually trying to say.

What if we responded to meaning instead of posture?

What if we remembered that disagreement doesn’t require hostility to work?

That friction doesn’t have to draw blood to do its job?

We talk a lot about rebuilding trust — in institutions, in politics, in civic life.

But none of that happens if every conversation feels like a battlefield.

You can’t build anything while swinging.

Maybe the most radical thing we could try right now isn’t being louder or sharper or faster.

Maybe it’s being a little less combative by default.

Not because we agree.

Not because it’s polite.

But because this way of speaking to each other clearly isn’t working.

I don’t want less disagreement.

I want less reflexive cruelty.

I want a culture that remembers it’s possible to argue and care about each other at the same time.

That used to be normal.

If that sounds naive now, that might be the clearest sign of how far we’ve drifted.