Let’s say, hypothetically, that I read this article and thought that its author was a hypocrite with poor reasoning skills, disturbing aspirations of hegemony, and a deep misunderstanding of what he calls “facts.” Would it be abusive for me to say so in the comments section?

For example, I would assume it should go without saying that the author himself would find this hypothetical opinion offensive. So does he get to decide? Who *does* get to decide? Are we just headed for a tyranny of the majority when it comes to general standards of offensiveness and abuse? Or is it just the abused minority that gets to run tyrannically rampant over all comment sections? Or is there a deeper theory here that I’m missing? If there is, I think I have *really* missed it. Instead, all I see is someone who wants the world to be the way he wants it and is willing to trample on anyone else who disagrees with him. Now, I don’t necessarily have a problem with that sort of behavior (mostly because it’s what everyone else does), but there is definitely a problem when this person is so delusional that he doesn’t see his own hypocrisy.

And you know, what’s really weird about this is that I do seem to share the author’s sense of what’s offensive (except with respect to the author’s own blindness and desperately impoverished view of ethics); yet, alas, I still find this pathetic and ill-supported knee-jerk article to be impeding the very values that we seem to share.

[N.B.: the very idea that women and people of color are not human beings and are not also capable of being just as offensive and bullying as others (depending on context) is so demonically sexist and racist that I’m honestly not sure how it wasn’t self-evident to the author…]