Back in the early 1990s, when I was managing editor of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, I had to mildly scold an editor who used the word “pissed” in a headline to describe one soap opera star who was angry with another.

I wasn’t personally bothered by this most innocuous of profanities, but some of our more squeamish readers howled, and I didn’t see any point in needlessly offending them.

I can’t help but feel sentimental about what gloriously innocent times those were.

Now we regularly see far more offensive vulgarities in newspapers — not because the standards are lower, but because the words are uttered by top leadership and not reporting them would amount to suppressing the news.

President Donald Trump boasted on tape of grabbing unsuspecting women “by the p*ssy.” He referred to nations populated by black people as “sh*thole countries.” His admiring guest Kanye West introduced the word “motherf*cker” to a public event in the Oval Office.

Closer to home, our U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono has been on a blistering swearing spree lately. Of her Republican critics, she said “f*ck them.” She demanded that Trump use his “godd*mn pen” to end the crisis over migrant children and has said “bullsh*t” so many times that a blog is keeping score.

Everybody wraps their foul language in rectitude.

The president and his adherents defend crude expressions of racism and misogyny as a battle against “political correctness,” as if it is unreasonably burdensome to be civil in the ways we speak to and about each other.

Some of his adversaries like Hirono are so flummoxed by Trump that they’ve lost the ability to wrap their brains around the rich vocabulary our language provides and think they have no choice but to fall face-first into the gutter.

I’m no prude and have been known to use salty language in my private communications. I’m aware that the most profane words have become embedded in our music, literature, popular culture and social media. They can be heard in nearly every schoolyard.

But it used to be that we’d outgrow it and not take our schoolyard language and behavior with us as we entered the public square, where maturity and regard for others meant something.

The question becomes, is our country better for it now that we’ve discarded these most basic conventions of mutual respect?

The first rule of a functioning democracy is that nobody gets to have everything their own way. Unable to square this with our self-righteousness, we’ve broken down into angry and entitled tribes.

I get it; we’re all pissed and think we have the right. But if we can’t get over it, the American union is in trouble and the schoolyard debate over who started it first matters little.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.