My regular reader (Hi Jeff!) will recall that I have mused about the declining levels of civility and basic good manners in recent years. And I have often leapt atop my rickety soapbox of idealism to decry the normalizing of boorishness, especially in our electoral process, albeit to no avail. But I shall leap once more into the breach of incivility all because of a recent Colorado Politics story.

It seems the Children’s Museum of Denver has had to close its doors for 10 days, due to the rank abuse hurled at the staff regarding the wearing of masks. Now, if you are an anti-masker and are treating your COVID symptoms with hydroxychloroquine, teas, essential oils, vitamins, tinctures, herbal therapies such as oleander/oleandrin and silver products such as colloidal silver (as per the NIH) you may want to skip this next grouchy part and jump to the very last sentence, where I have news for you on a new “cure.”

Again, a children’s museum had to shut down because some nasty people chose to take their kids there in the first place and chose to then yell at the poor staff (who are just trying to get kids excited about science and more). The museum will be closed until Friday, when Denver’s indoor mask mandate expires.

A few months ago, I wrote about my decision to retire from officiating high school football games. I just couldn’t take the rudeness anymore; the incivility was shocking and, well, very disappointing. I used to joke with the coaches before kickoff that back when I was a military cop I had a gun, a badge, and a whistle, and people respected me and did what I told them to do. Now as an official, I joshed, I only had the whistle and I hope that the coach would help me out. But all too often, they didn’t.

Incivility isn’t new. Back when George Washington was first standing for the presidency (I won’t say “running,” because he refused to campaign, as was normal back then) there was a political cartoon in a newspaper that showed Washington astride a donkey, with the caption something like “an ass and a donkey arrive in town.”

But you know what old George didn’t have to deal with?

The internet.

I’m guessing that a high percentage of the jerks who abused the Children’s Museum staff had “conducted research” on the internet regarding masks and COVID and had concluded that, based on the presumed expertness of mysterious writers, that masked don’t work. Spoiler: they do.

I can’t help but recall the story of the polio vaccine, which I mentioned in an earlier column. Our nation vanquished a deadly disease that killed or maimed millions (including many who suffers post-polio effects to this day). When the vaccine was rolled out in 1955, parents listened to the experts and lined up their kids for shots. I remember when I was about four or five visiting our pediatrician (with the unfortunate medical name of “Dr. Pain”) and watching him put a couple of drops of vaccine onto a sugar cube which I then got to eat. From my point of view, I was getting to eat sugar, with my mom’s blessing. From her point of view, her youngest was now immune from the illness that very nearly took her eldest’s life.

Children born today will have no memories of sugar cubes, because the mass use of the vaccine enabled the US to achieve herd immunity, and after the year 2000, or so, they simply don’t need to give the vaccine to kids anymore, because they won’t be exposed to it.

But can you imagine what would have happened if the internet had been a thing back in the mid-1950s? I’m quite sure we’d have seen vaccine denial, refusal to let kids be inoculated, and we’d likely still have polio cases here in the US.

I’ve noted before that one of the truly unfortunate results of a ill-mannered and uncouth president during the beginnings of the pandemic is that loutish behavior has become normalized. And perhaps the churlish behaviors toward the museum staff come from a sincere belief that somehow masks on kids make things worse.

But even with that concession, I still refuse to excuse rudeness. Some people, who could have chosen to stay away from the museum until the mask mandate expires in a few days, chose instead to come to the museum. Upon seeing the “masks required” signs, they could have quietly turned around and gone home until, again, a few days from now when masks are not required. But instead, they chose to attack the poor staff members whose only sin was trying to educate the kids and show them a good time. It takes a person with a very high sense of entitlement to think it OK to abuse people for doing their jobs, and sadly, way too many of those folks are walking around, being, well, mean.

Thanks to the museum staff for trying to get through these difficult days. And to those of you who are being nasty and rude, have you heard about the most recent craze, I mean “cure” for COVID involving drinking something special?

Maybe you should check it out?

(Everyone else ignore that link, please).

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.