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Incivility has its uses. So do tact, compassion and gentleness.
Problems arise when incivility becomes a conduit by which rational responses are shut out in favor of emotional responses. You end up with political factions which don't view each other as human beings with legitimate concerns, but as mindless others, driven by short-sighted compulsion to ruin everything.
So you see people talk about "libs" or "conservatives" or "republithugs" or "demojerks" or "statists" (substitute your favorite vaguely to overtly pejorative term).
Incivility tends to encourage incivility, which then tends to make things get worse when problem solving is the actual goal. Because when you think someone has done you wrong, you might tend to be more interested in doing them wrong or protecting yourself from further wrongdoing than actually trying to be productive.
Hence, the powers that be in this country (you know, the ones with the money and the power) spend vast amounts of money convincing us that the people we disagree with have done us wrong. That way we'll spend so much time hating on each other that we'll never get around to realizing that the people who have actually done us wrong are the ones with all the power and resources. It's not the people who've benefited disproportionately from the status quo who have done us wrong, it's the impoverished, exploited immigrants or those urban liberals. It's not the "we're to spineless to not be complicit in the destruction of this country, oh and by the way, never mind that we're just as beholden to big business as the other guys" democratic party that's the problem, it's those ignorant old tea partiers.
And then, regardless of whether any incivility existed initially, mass quantities of incivility are produced as a response to perceived incivility and things get worse.
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