>It tickles me how words have become weapons of insult.
We used to chant "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." Now they need counselling if somebody mis-pronouns them, even when there's no reasonable possibility of deliberate insult if a stranger doesn't know your pronoun is "xi".
And then there's Ann Coulter- from 2018 so it can only have gotten worse:
“One of the things I miss the most now in the Trump era is that I used to have lots of liberal friends,” lamented Coulter as an Upper East Sider glared our way. “We’d have big dinner parties and we’d debate and it was fun and we’d go out. I still have some liberal friends I can talk to, but a lot of them I can’t… I miss some of my friends.”I wonder whether they miss her?
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
