>Each individual move to exclude dirt or kill germs is impeccable—beyond criticism, lest one be accused of favoring germs—but the endgame is sterile and leaves

>Each individual move to exclude dirt or kill germs is impeccable—beyond criticism, lest one be accused of favoring germs—but the endgame is sterile and leaves us vulnerable to worse ailments. Cracking down sternly on everything that is "not appropriate" and "could be offensive" is not taking us to a good place—it's making us meaner and colder, and even in many cases crueler (I'm not talking about you). Online discourse badly needs a way to get off this train. Maybe we need to risk some injury by jumping off before we crash. Just have to say, I greatly appreciate this response, and it expresses a lot of my personal thoughts in a way I've always struggled to. As someone with a neuromuscular disease, I make quite a few "cripple" jokes, and while most people get the self-deprecating humor, I occasionally run into people who berate me for being inappropriate, since "other disabled people may find it offensive." Those "occasional" encounters have tripled in frequency in recent years, and it's left me feeling a bit unsettled. Logically, it shouldn't make me feel unsettled--I mean, people are literally saying, "I respect people like you so much, I don't want to hear ANYONE say mean things about them." But your response puts it beautifully--it's not the individual encounters that make me unsettled, but the over-arching environment those seemingly well-intentioned encounters create.