The respect for civility in political discourse has suffered over the last few decades. Political debate, negotiation and compromise in legislative chambers and between legislatures and executives was the norm before cable news put a 24-hour spotlight on the process and made every petty victory and defeat an election rallying call.

Instead of politicians making negotiated compromises on the floor of legislative chambers, elected officials had to hold the line against the opposition not because it was good policy but because the cameras were rolling and the sound bytes preserved for eternity would haunt them at election time.

This nastiness took a sharp turn in the era of the internet and social media, when users post political statements in real time on their Facebook pages or Twitter feeds, which are then upvoted by allies or ridiculed by opponents trying to see who can have the fastest, funniest or cruelest response rather than debating the merits of the statement or analyzing the underlying fundamentals.

In such an environment, logical fallacies breed like red herring in a barrel, which irks those of us who value logic and rhetoric to no end.

Now a mistake or misstatement on a microphone becomes a meme and a suggestion of working across the aisle is attacked for the mere thought of finding common ground.

However, it is monumentally sad when this type of flawed digital discourse escapes the online world and manifests on debate stages in front of our eyes. We should have higher standards for ourselves, our democracy and our discourse.

The social media environment is made even worse by bots or hijacked accounts, such as those that sometimes post vitriol on our Facebook pages. For instance, a recent story about the shuttering of a National Park Service office in Camp Verde got hundreds of local responses.

Shortly thereafter, the comments started coming from users with odd-sounding names whose profiles consisted of a handful of pictures of an older woman and her dog and husband from 2012 to 2014 and, starting about six months ago, a meme farm of garbage political content every few hours and nary of a photo of that nice old lady.

Clearly these were highjacked or hacked abandoned accounts with altered user names from a bot farm out of Ljubljana, Skopje or Volgograd.

When we choose to engage in debate, we should agree to speak and to listen in equal measure. If someone is willing to spin lies, let them hang themselves. Rebut the arguments, pointing out the inconsistencies and factual errors, and question the fundamental thesis if it’s flawed.

Post links to news sources and commentary from both sides of the aisle that disprove the nonsense. We must urge voters, readers and audiences to judge arguments on their values, not their volume.

When someone posts a meme, don’t accept it just because it validates your argument. Look at it critically and think about the flaws in the argumentation before you repost it. If you don’t, someone else will.

We must also have the courage to step out of our echo chambers. All too often I’ve gotten emails or phone calls from readers who dislike an a letter to the editor or an opinion and demand it be disavowed or retracted or repealed. They want their opposition censored or silenced but are too cowardly to write a rebuttal. Demanding that opposing views be silenced because we disagree is no way to conduct a liberal democracy.

Democrats and Republicans need to bury this enmity. There’s a reason neither party has a majority of registered voters in Arizona. The middle is tired of the “us or them” garbage that leaves one party running governments that don’t work and the other party wanting government to go away.

One wants to reduce government to a size at which it can be drowned in the bathtub, the other wants so many byzantine regulations that no one can get in the tub — or the water has evaporated by the time they do. Americans in the middle just want to take a bath.

One of my neighbors, Dick Menard, who would see my family walking down our street — my 2-year-old son sprints behind his Little Tykes Push & Ride car at full speed and that thing is disproportionately and violently loud on our street’s rough asphalt — would time his afternoon walks to join us.

He and I had vastly different political opinions that he jokingly shared during our walk. We both agreed that both presidential candidates were too old to be running for office — though both were almost his age — and behaved absurdly, as well as the parties parroting their talking points in defiance of normal, common-sense logic that he used to build his business and I use to run a newspaper.

We had a great time talking about the news of the day. He was a friend and a neighbor with a sharp mind and a great sense of humor, not someone we could not speak to because of who he voted for.

I was saddened when he recently died, and my oldest daughter was too. My three kids didn’t care what party he supported — he was just the nice man who would wave when we drove by, sometimes walk with us and always talk with daddy. That’s how I want my kids to think about politics as they grow up — we disagree but remain fond friends.

Richard “Dick” Menard

1939 — Feb. 16, 2025

Richard “Dick” Menard, 85, of Sedona, passed away Feb. 16, 2025, while in Daytona, Fla. for a weekend of racing.

He was born in Worcester, Mass., in 1939 to Lucille and Leo Menard.

A gifted mechanic and self proclaimed gear head, he campaigned the race car ‘Mr. Freeze’ at many local drag strips with his lifelong friends and brother Paul.

In 1974 he relocated to Sedona, with his former wife Linda with whom he had his second daughter Marisa. On Feb. 16, 1991, he married Lorna Riley (d. 2020) and enjoyed over 40 years of adventures together.

While in Sedona for 50 years, he opened Dick’s Car Clinic. Both the shop and the person were part of the fabric of the town working on everything from daily drivers to full blown customs. Always a gear head at heart, he took to building and racing boats, and later in life brought the custom blazer he built for Lorna to local car shows.

Whether at the shop, the diner, or the lake, he was always quick to share a story or two as well as his opinions of everything from racing to politics. He treasured his time with family, and his friends became family.

Dick was preceded in death by his wife Anne Beauregard, as well as his first daughter Lisa, and son Mark. He is survived by his daughter Marisa Menard Philips, brothers Donald and Dennis Menard, and granddaughters Hailey and Hayden Philips.