“Is rudeness like nakedness, a state deserving the tact and mercy of the clothed?”

Are people rude because they are unhappy? Is rudeness like nakedness, a state deserving the tact and mercy of the clothed? If we are polite to rude people, perhaps we give them back their dignity; yet the obsessiveness of the rude presents certain challenges to the proponents of civilized behavior. It is an act of disinhibition: Like a narcotic, it offers a sensation of glorious release from jailers no one else can see.

Rachel Cusk, “The Age of Rudeness”, The New York Times Magazine (19 February 2017), 41.