The Island has always prided itself on being a place apart from the mainland. This is one of the last holdouts in America against fast food, violent crime, racism and people living in fear behind locked doors and drawn curtains. On Martha’s Vineyard neighbors help neighbors in times of need, and children ride their bikes into town centers and walk home from the school bus — often down long dirt roads — unaccompanied by an adult.

To be sure the Island has its problems. Year-round housing is scarce and expensive, substance abuse is prevalent and a proliferation of tick-borne disease threatens public health, to name just a few. But despite the proximity of extreme wealth and poverty in a confined place, mutual respect and tolerance for differences of opinion have long been a hallmark of the public conversation here.

Against that backdrop, it’s troubling to see the mean streak that’s running through the country these days cross the Sound and creep into the corners of the Vineyard.

In Chilmark, the annual town meeting turned unexpectedly ugly during the debate about whether to allow beer and wine sales in restaurants. Classically rural, classically Yankee, Chilmark is the last dry town on the Vineyard and has politely preferred to stay that way while in recent years West Tisbury, Aquinnah and Vineyard Haven have all made the shift to license the sale of alcohol in restaurants. A reasonable position, but on the third Monday in April in the Chilmark Community Center, opponents were anything but polite. The clear message, stay out of our town if you don’t like the way we do things, was deeply divisive and troubling. Many voters left the meeting as the clock neared midnight that chilly spring evening feeling bruised and shaken.

Meanwhile, in tiny Aquinnah where rough and tumble politics are not unusual, the heated race for assessor this year was a window into tensions that have been bubbling in town hall. For months, the selectmen and board of assessors had been sparring over authority and control. At the town election, a veteran member of the board of assessors was ousted in favor of the former town administrator, and voters approved an override to the town’s debt limit by a single vote.

But in the runup to the election an anonymous email newsletter began circulating and brought town politics to a new low. Calling itself the Gay Head Politico, the newsletter took personal aim at town officials — naming everyone except of course the author, who remained safely out of sight. A clever parody? Hardly. A cheap smear campaign that inflamed rather than informed.

We can only hope this state of insanity on the Vineyard is temporary, soon to be overtaken by the civility we have long known and cherished.