Today it is pretty easy, for sure, to be branded as an abusive person. If you critizise another peoples political, religious etc. ideas (in particular if you make a few points that are irrefutable, they call you abusive. If you question the hypocrazy of any religion or other dogma (such as gender equality or green political correctness) you suddenly find yourself classified together with mass-murder, darth-vader and sodomist.
I think the term “Abuse” should be restricted to case when one makes negative, derogatory remarks about another persons features for which he/she is not t be blamed (like stature, size, health status etc).
But I like any hard, critical, even unpolite comment about other peoples political, religious, social etc ideas or about their prejudice, paired with self-confident and an astonishing absence of basic knowledge. When a friends couple recently told me that they refuse any vaccination for their kids, and they swear on homeopathy and body-waves, I told them without any hesitation that in my eyes they are “stupid and completely uneducated and that I wish later in life their kids will sue them in the court for neglectance”. Was this an abusive remark ? I don’t think so. It might have been unpolite, but I had the intention to painfully damage their weired ideas.
If a family sits there, crying about the last words of their son who fell as a marine in Iraq or elsewhere in the world (where he “only” did his job), I would frankly tell them “Yes, I feel with you, I know how bitter it is to raise a stupid son”. Is this abusive ? It is true, he should have informed himself a bit better, but he only saw the glossy pictures and cool guns and uniforms and muscle shirts and hummer cars and Tom_Cruise sun glasses. If he thought that this is all he can get, and nothing he could loose, than he was stupid, and even a priest calling him like this on his grave should not be blamed “abusive”.
With this term “Abuse” it is with many other terms used to judge peoples behaviour: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it”.
O.k., you are definitly right when you say that basic good manners and common courtesy are missing (but who knows, maybe we are just fooled by comparing old Gregory Peck and Doris Day movies with the full spectrum of todays real life ?). When I hear that a presidental candidate (you know whom I have in mind: Donald-the-roof-tile-Trump) makes stupid remarks about his competitors face or her gender, this is what I call abusive. When somebody makes generalizing and derogative remarks about other ethnicities (or even followers of other faiths), this is also what I call abusive. But I don’t know if it should be a matter of legal prohibition. In an argument between ideas or political opinions, however there can not be any limit. Can one abuse an idea, or a faith ? When I say that the holy bible are fairytales, that Jesus (in case he lived) has not performed any miracles, but that he was an ordenary man, maybe a good guy, as million other good guys in mankind, but for sure not somebody to make a cult of personality around: Would this be called abusive, and me being prosecuted by Paul and 35 million Canadians ?
You see I studied physics and genetics, and if people approach me stating that there was no evolution on earth and that they can communicate with angels on the other side of the moon, I could equally feel abused, since such ideas are totally against my believe in logic and science. But even if these people come with a whole army of followers, and with very well made words, and they outscream me, I still would not call them abusive. It is their right to question my believe, as longf as it remains a battle of arguments. And I don’t see any reason why religion, christianity, islam, hinduism or the church of the flying spaghetti monster should be granted a special status of protection from such a battle of ideas.
