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Notes -
I don’t think you’re correct in diagnosing hypocrisy and “mass group guilt catharsis” when looking at the disparate treatment of stupid people vs. visibly retarded people. Most Americans (especially progressives, but also including plenty of non-progressives) are blank slatists who believe that almost anyone can improve his intelligence through education and effort. When those people see someone say something mind-numbingly stupid, they therefore see a moral failing and have no compunction about calling it out and ridiculing the person who publicly sinned in that way. When they see a visibly retarded person, however, they see someone whose lack of intelligence isn’t his fault, and so to do anything other than praise his intellectual efforts, meager though they are, would be completely inappropriate. Not that most blank slatists would be able to articulate that distinction, but I believe that’s what’s going on at an instinctual level.
Of course, to a non-blank-slatist, the underlying premise seems ridiculous, so the poor treatment of regular stupid people seems unconscionable.
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