The word “retarded”—as with all other clinical terms used to describe neurodivergent people and people with intellectual disabilities throughout history—connotes an indisputably normative claim: that cognitive ability is proportionate one’s to worth/value as a human being. Today, this is far…
less so the case, but this is not to say that there are not millions of Americans who still think this way but merely police their language (or rationalize their beliefs within the framework of conventional morality). In my view, the only intellectual trait that ought to be called “retarded”…