Nope, it is my well informed opinion after reading all your comments. Your take is incredibly stupid and ignores context.

Because that’s how I used it on the playground when I was a child.

I feel like there is a concession here?

I asserted another person was less due to an intellectual disability, normalizing that it’s OK to insult people using a term that once upon a time neutrally described the intellectually disabled.

This is explicitly what they're saying it doesn't mean. They're not referring to literal mentally handicapped people. They're using a casual if aggressive put-down towards people who demonstrate profound anti-intellectualism in a way those people would understand as a means to viscerally and painfully insult them.

And they're doing so in a way that doesn't mentally police their own language. Self policing perpetually requires cognitive effort and second guessing. It puts you culturally on the backfoot. If you want to fight rightwing demons, you have to go for the jugular on a pure red boiling instinctual level, or you lose. You have to fight so hard that there is collateral damage, otherwise the average person will simply see you as inauthentic and overly clean and calculated.

Further, ableism and other particular 'isms' like racism and sexism are not directly comparable. Talk about bad faith. Ableism based insults directly reference material capabilities in the person you are insulting, definitionally. Racism and Sexism are bad because they prescriptively assign people to irrational and prejudiced stereotypes about their weakness or unworthiness. Ableism just directly references perceived weakness. This is still rude and mean spirited, and thus can easily be bad. But it is simply not the same.

I am autistic. When people insult rightwinger's social behavior by calling them a cringey autist (and yes, I've seen this) it does sting. It does bring about some bitterness because I did not choose to be this way. But I get it... I understand. If it hurts the rightwinger, its probably worth it. And I've even engaged in the same seeming self loathing indulgence to get at people who need to be brought down a peg.

There is no moral difference between calling someone "stupid" and using the R word, except in the impact of the term. And the modern rightwinger gives absolutely no shits if you call them an "asshole". In fact, many of them like that, they'll even embrace their lack of morals with pride.

And then I learned that it isn’t OK to punch down, that the people used as an insult were as human and deserving of respect as myself.

Correction: Its harmful to punch down. Its more harmful to refuse to punch down as some kind of holy rule if it weakens a righteous cause to more broadly protect the weak. By destroying a rightwinger's pride through such humiliation of their material ability you are helping the weak, even if through "splash damage" you also hurt their feelings.

That said: I don't even think any of my politically tactical justifications here are wholly needed. Sometimes you want to hurt who you rightfully hate and are willing to damage yourself and others to do it. Rational ethics do not always come into the picture when you are facing the end of the world. Its just eye rolling to expect clean language as we sink into the fires of hell.

Sometimes you want to emotionally unburden yourself and metaphorically just rip a pigs head off in the mud because the world has shit on you when you did not deserve it. My visceral hatred of the average dipshit rightwinger is so intense as to nearly be the reason I've not off'd myself. I'm almost surviving off spite right now.

There is a correct and good community building way to address this issue, and there is a "Gotcha, fucker! you made a mistake in your words, I'm gonna yell at you on the internet!" way of dealing with this issue.

The correct way would be to privately message the person and say, "Hey, please don't use that kind of language, it is offensive"

They might have gone back and edited it.

I feel like people have forgotten the concept of face, since the internet is anonymous, and a lot of flame wars happen because people do not consider each other's faces when they are talking to each other.

So if you really consider the impact of derailing a conversation about how Republicans and Trump supporters and fascist pedophiles are destroying the entire world and making everyone on the planet miserable to say, "Hey, you used a word that is offensive to people with mental difficulties", then I would say that you were in the wrong for addressing your concern in the way that you did, not that your concern itself was wrong.

Yes, and apparently my reading comprehension is better than yours. They're saying Republican Trump supporters are so dumb their intelligence is on the level of someone with an intellectual disability.

They're not disparaging the mentally disabled or saying that mentally disabled people are lesser. They're making a comparison.

But I bet you'd be perfectly fine if they had called Trump supporters morons, which is exactly the same type of insult as retarded.

Because I believe it does hurt them and shame them more forcefully and is more effective conveying the degree of stupidity. I also think, tangentially (like wild), that Internet culture change vastly outpaces built-in generationally learned norms and that young people interact with older more than ever. And the amount of change desired, among a billion other more important factors but a factor none the less, is essentially 'annoying people into fascism'. Especially in non formal settings, outside the workspace, legal language,Again, small factor in a while lot of things.

Some people are going to be full on charge. Some will think you are silly and over reacting. Sometimes, is an education thing and they are genuinely happy to learn. But if not, you insisting is essentially using political or social capital in various different ways. And I think it's over used and failing because of said generational differences.

It's not really my hill to die on. I just think they are a lost cause and I want to hurt and shame them at this point and think most people (maybe not on fediverse) enjoy hearing them described as such.

Language is about intent.

I think "Jap" is one of the dumbest slurs there is, since it's just cutting off two letters from the country, and I'm not offended when I hear it, I just laugh. But it's still a slur.

There is an entire South Park episode on people changing the way they use "fag" from slander against gays, to slander against Harley motorcycle riders. You are one of the gays in this episode who doesn't understand the intent behind why/how the way the word is used changes