It would be a mistake to think that we are a freer country. We're not. Liberty is hanging from a frayed thread. What you take for civility and polite discussion, is just fear. People are increasingly afraid to speak their minds.
Politicians get away with lies all the time in British politics. Only trivial sins are exposed and only when the establishment benefits. It's just a way to torpedo the establishment's enemies and give people the illusion that ethical values are being upheld.
That idiot Bolton is a perfect example. That b*tch girlfriend of his is probably undercover MI-5. That story has honey trap written all over it. Excellent propaganda. Just association with something bad is enough to squash him.
The story that Theresa May used to torpedo her leadership rival Andrea Leadsom is typical of the hypersensitivity to slights that infects politics these days. Of course people with children are more invested in the future. OF COURSE THEY ARE! (I don't have children, partly because I'm too pessimistic about the future to want them. I'm not invested in the future, because I know there probably is no future. Though I recognise that leaders need to be a bit more optimistic than me to be effective.) The fact that she had to withdraw over that is a disgrace. It was very weak of her to apologise.
The most common type of insult now in British politics is to claim that someone has insulted you and shame them for it. They imply that only someone of bad character would say such a thing. This is not civility. It's just a passive aggressive character attack, no different than a direct insult.
Insults are always going to be there. We should admit this is part of the game. It shouldn’t disqualify someone from political debate.
"The most often insulted or rebuked are those who are weakest in terms of ability to fight back."
Just because someone is weak individually doesn't mean they are weak collectively. The weakest people in society, and those they manipulate into supporting them, are collectively an army that will crush the rest of us and steal everything we have. They need to be held in check.
“And all this insulting would be grand, if those doing the insulting could take it back rather than dish it out.”
Your argument is like saying that a boxer "can dish it out but can't take it" because he tries to hit his opponent while avoiding blows himself. That's the game. All this "don't sink to their level" talk is all very well for things that don't really matter. Politics does matter.
In politics, an insult demands a response. In politics, people have to defend themselves. Taking an insult is tacitly admitting the insult is based on something valid. It's weak.
Zeitgeist 