The problem is you’re not hurting the ones you want to, and you are hurting people - real poeple - who do not deserve it. It’s like bombing a wedding or school when you want to bomb the terrorists.

And do we need to discuss how language works? “Colored” used to be the preferred term for people who are Black - the NAACP still has the term in their name from that time. But try calling someone that. In the same way, many of the people who are “retarted” still have the medical diagnosis of “mental retardation”. It doesn’t make the word any less offensive in the same way that calling someone of colour “Colored” is. That’s just how language works. The words you mentioned have passed into common usage.

So at the VERY BEST, your argument is “I should be able to use offensive and hurtful words because they might become non-offensive in the future” while causing actural, real harm now, and not even accomplishing the goal you want to accomplish anyway.

As far as how to rescue our country, here are some brief thoughts:

1. The best way, but one of the hardest, is to try and break through the relentless fascist propaganda and change the minds of those who do actually understand progressive ideas - when it affects them personally. Countless times we hear of them suddenly realizing that abortion is a right when THEIR family needs one, that social safety nets are important when THEIR family needs them. It’s difficult to break through, but this would be the best way if we could.

2. The second best way is to do the same for all those who have bought into the “both sides” and “politics doesn’t matter” and don’t vote, and get them to vote blue. Even with the current state of the Democratic party with its large establishment contingent that are beholden to the oligarchs like the Republicans all are, we’d see SOME progress with a Democratic super-majority

3. Encouraging progressive politics. It seems that the DSA is currently becoming a center of power and interest with this idea - enough people are becoming comfortable with the idea of democratic socialism (as opposed to Socialism) that there’s some progress possible here, so we should support that - because the time for progressive politics is the primaries and before that - in the general, it is time for “vote blue no matter who” because the progressive battle might’ve already been lost, but red vs blue is still worth fighting.

4. The least lovely way for change is by enough people having enough and standing up and taking back our government. This requires MUCH risk. People WILL die almost certainly, and it might not work. But what you NEED for that is enough people out on the streets shutting everything down that action must happen - and you need a plan - and you need people ready to go take over. And to get there, you need massive protests. And to get massive protesets, you need sustained and growing protests. And to get there, you need organization and you need people getting other people to get out and protest, and for that you need people convincing others that it’s something worth our time to do, and to convince others that we CAN make a change and get progressive politics/laws in place. So ti’s a big process. Oh, and most likely, you need some sort of spark for the fire - once everyone is out on the streets, ideally something happens that causes people to lose their shit and stand up and take over.

So there’s all these things we need to be working on, and none of them involve using ableist slurs that don’t help.

Don’t you do ol’ greg like that

I wasn’t the one who did it, and personally, I think it could have gone either way, but while I don’t think I would have removed that one, I certainly would not argue against its removal. I don’t think the moderator needs to calm down at all. A ban for that comment might’ve been rather much, but a simple removal is perfectly fine.