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I saw someone today register objection to the word "moron" as ableist language.
I... no. No no no.
Terms like "idiot", "moron", and "cretin" were, it's true, once used to categorise people who were perceived as being mentally deficient. But there is no way anyone would use them that way now, because their meanings have shifted.
However, if you decry as offensive any term which has ever historically had an application which would now be offensive, but which now have distinctly different meanings and connotations, then we are going to be very short, very soon, of available words with which we can criticise anyone for anything, and certainly lack for any way to express shades or nuances of meaning thereby.
I consider Tony Abbott to be a moron. He has sufficient intellectual competence to function in society, more or less, and even to succeed in politics, somehow, despite his knack for insulting pretty much everyone ever and his negative charisma, but he's a moron. (You gave a surfboard as your official gift to President Barack Obama, Tony? Hawaiian-born President Barack Obama? You thunderous cretin. Go back to England, please, you're an embarrassment to Australia.)
I don't know many ways to say that he's a moron without using words from that category. "Fool" would have worked a couple of centuries ago, but it has different connotations now. Saying he's stupid doesn't really convey "possessed of reasonable native intelligence, grossly misapplied to the point of simulating a badly-written AI that would fail the Turing test within three sentences, tops".
And that last one is too long to exclaim in exasperation every time you hear that he did something idiotic, because he's Tony Abbott. It happens multiple times daily.
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