Political correctness is a made-up threat to our democracy. Incivility is real.

On Nov. 5 voters took a step toward making Kentucky politics civil again, at a minimum cleansing the governor’s office of rank incivility. Civility has been vital to democracy since the Athenians invented it in the sixth century B.C.

Civility is not, as its transgressors maintain, political correctness. Civility encourages citizens of a geographically vast and culturally diverse nation to respect and have mutual regard for one another despite their differences.

Since the founding of the Republic incivility frequently erupted in political and social life. For many reasons it has increased in recent decades and skyrocketed since Comrade Trump’s campaign. As president he maintains the loyalty of many Republicans in part by attacking critics and opponents with crude, insulting and often vicious rhetoric.

In June 2018, a Virginia restaurant owner, fed up with press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders imperious treating of Trump’s daily lies as truth, refused her service. The incident galvanized an already ongoing debate about civility, that frequently confused politeness with civility, and rudeness with incivility.

The right exploded with indignation joined by many liberals, ignoring the fact that, as Adam Gopnik wrote in the New Yorker, that Trump hates and assaults civility to implement authoritarian government. Sanders’s chosen job, he added, was to treat lies as truth and make lies acceptable, the road to tyranny.

The restaurant owner does not deny service to ordinary citizens who are conservative or Trump supporters. She was holding accountable a public official who has power and influence.

When Trump ran for president he benefited from a backlash against political correctness with majorities of Democrats, Republicans and Independents, according to an October 2015 Fairleigh Dickinson poll, agreeing it was “a big problem.”

But misguided students who refuse to allow conservative speakers on campus, and professors who do not assign classic literature offensive to minorities or women hardly possess the enormous political and economic power and the ability to shape culture of the Trump administration.

Former President Obama has criticized the coddling of students and “woke call-outs.” “This idea of purity and you’re never compromised …you should get over that quickly. The world is messy …. People who do really good stuff have flaws.”

Obama also knows, however, that the threat of PC to free speech has been manufactured as a weapon to beat up liberals, Democrats, women, and the vulnerable. From the 1970s on reactionary billionaires funded think tanks, fellowships and books, i.e. propaganda, to attack a phantom threat. They helped drive a wedge between the white working class and a Democratic Party allegedly allied with liberal elite word police.

An internet search for books on “political correctness” finds a long list describing an existential threat to free thought and speech. Titles include: “Thought Prison: Political Correctness Gone Mad?” and “The Next Nightmare.” Others inform readers that PC sabotages art, destroys social order, undermines the military, corrupts journalism, and endangers students.

The radical Right’s campaign against PC along with the general erosion of civility opened the door to Trump’s anti-immigrant nativism and racism. Note well, Trump’s derogatory insults against Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Hispanics generally, women, African Americans, poor countries, a disabled reporter, Muslim parents who lost a son in combat, many others, are not just uncivil, they are cruel.

Incivility has never been absent from American politics and never will be. Americans believe it has risen sharply in recent years in part because of greater exposure to it via the internet, decentralized media, partisan television networks, social media, and the sorting of voters into more homogeneous parties.

Moreover, political scientists remind us that it is woven into an energetic tradition of freedom of expression and often fierce partisan competition.

Yet governing with a constant stream of lies and incivility undermines democracy. It reduces trust in government, heightens polarization and tribalism inducing lack of respect for and demonizing of those with whom you disagree, and furthers Congressional dysfunction in coping with the nation’s problems.

The long history of “civility” tells us that the concept conveys not only politeness, courtesy, and nobility, but also that it binds us together as citizens and humans.

Ron Formisano is the author of American Oligarchy: The Permanent Political Class (University of Illinois, 2017.