It isn't just airline passengers and grade-school parents who have forgotten how to act like civilized adults lately. Some members of Congress, especially on the Right, are afflicted by the same phenomenon. Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., provided the latest example Sunday when he promoted an animated depiction of himself killing fellow Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. It's time for Congress to crack down on this kind of behavior — starting with a House censure of Gosar.

Much of today's political incivility can be traced back to the repugnant personal behavior of former President Donald Trump. The childish name-calling, the brazen lies, and most of all the frequent nods to political violence demonstrated just how far even a sitting president could push the envelope. It's fair to wonder if those who are disrupting passenger flights and school board meetings lately would be so obnoxious had Trump not spent four years normalizing such behavior among populist-leaning conservatives.

That may also explain why Trump acolytes like Gosar think it's OK for sitting members of Congress — the people's employees — to engage in behavior that would get most employees in America fired. Gosar's Sunday knee-slapper was an anime that had been altered to show a cartoon character with Gosar's face superimposed on it, swinging a sword at the neck of a character with Ocasio-Cortez's face on it.

In March, another of these Trumpist charmers, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., released a video in which gunfire can be heard behind an image of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. This was two months after some of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists scoured the halls of Congress looking for Pelosi so they could "shoot her in the friggin' brain," according to a court affidavit.

Then there's Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., whose loss of her committee assignments because of past calls for violence against Democrats has apparently prompted her to be more bipartisan in her hate speech: Last week she tweeted the office phone numbers of the 13 House Republicans who supported President Joe Biden's infrastructure plan, calling them "traitors." That was the same word a caller subsequently used in a phone message to one of the "yes" voters, Rep. Fred Upton, R-N.Y.: "You're a (expletive) piece of (expletive) traitor. I hope you die. I hope everybody in your (expletive) family dies."

Perhaps Greene can use that audio in her next campaign ad.

Incivility in Congress isn't limited to conservatives; some on the hard Left have been guilty of it as well. Extremism of any persuasion tends to foster extreme speech. But violent speech is another matter, and it's being spewed primarily by far-right Trump-backers. If Jan. 6 should have taught America anything, it's that violent words can fuel real-world violence on the ground. It's time for a zero-tolerance approach by both parties to this kind of rhetorical poison.

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Photo credit: PhotoMIX-Company at Pixabay