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In reply to the discussion: Ironically, once you decide a person or group is "stupid," you are relieved from thinking about them [View all]JCanete
(5,272 posts)or belittle someone.
Honestly though, you act like words haven't historically been used and intended as violence. They are used against people of color and homosexuals and women constantly. You're pretending as if that can't be the case. That there's nothing there because on the scale those little words can't harm somebody.
And it is simple. When you insist on telling somebody that he or she is stupid, what is your angle? You are just saying it matter of factly? You don't actually intend to insult them? You don't want them to feel humiliation or self-loathing? Clearly, from the posts on this subject, claiming that would be bullshit.
But as I've said many times, it's not like these people are marginalized. If you want to engage in that, they are not going to be destroyed because of your approach, they will just be even less likely to hear us. They will feel your intentions as violent. It doesn't fucking matter if they themselves are violent. That is so beside the point.
What isn't is when we engage in, whether you want to pretend we were or weren't, rhetoric that is literally saying certain people are literally less intelligent. We all know who are not going to be the adults in the room. We agree that there is a certain ignorance rampant on one side of the political spectrum. But why do you need so badly to label them as stupid?
Given the demographics, for some people that distinction is earned almost entirely by virtue of them being born in the wrong place of the wrong state.
Assuming stupid means assuming there is something fundamentally wrong with their brains. I don't know if you've said it, but it's rampant in these posts. "They are incapable of change." "They are a lost cause." That is going to be one sad self-fulfilling prophecy for all of us.