There’s a clear campaign against the mentally ill with the global rise of fascism. Lots of it shows up in anti homeless rhetoric, but you can see it in the MAHA and anti vaccination movements.
There’s no reason to use the word “r-tarded” to describe someone. As someone who’s worked with the intellectually challenged, it’s an insult to them to compare them with people who are willfully ignorant.
I mean… just look at elon musk.
conservatives (and, if your stance is that “I can’t change my language just because people decided it is suddenly offensive” then you are fundamentally conservative), think the pinnacle of humanity is 20-30 years ago. Generally when they were teenagers or whatever the fuck musk is doing with cultivating his entire life to be the kind of person who posts on 4chan about how LUE over on gamefaqs banned them.
And… 20 or 30 years ago the various funny people on TV were casually dropping slurs like r****d.
And then you just have the normal response to any pushback or criticism on The Internet. People spend 28 hours a day watching Content at 1.5x speed where they are constantly reinforced to their world view (or, more often, the world view of their favorite influencer…) because of The Algorithm. ANYTHING that is not telling them exactly what to do or think is met with scorn.
And when someone says something that goes against that worldview? It is “disingenuous” or “gaslighting” because it is not just a question on if they need to improve as a human being… it is actively opposed to their very existence. It is like they had been wearing red tinted glasses for years and someone said “Actually the sky is blue, not purple”.