No matter how much I loathe someone's actions or ideas or how they've hurt others, I can't bring myself to say "that person's trash," because a very inconvenient but central claim of Christianity is that, unlike actual trash, no one can simply be thrown out or disposed of.

And a very obvious lesson of history is that linguistic violence breeds actual violence (both against individuals and entire people groups), and that meeting dehumanizing language with more dehumanizing language creates a revenge cycle that doesn't effect the justice we seek.

I'm all for powerful leaders and public figures being held accountable for trash words and actions. This is not winking at wrongdoing or idiocy. It's more like being compelled to believe that wrongdoing and idiocy don't have the complete say on someone's worth, including my own