The Greatest Insult

Everybody has their idea of the worst insult, the worst thing someone can say to you.  For Marty McFly, it was being called chicken.  For Sheldon Cooper, it’s disrespecting his grandmother.  For some people, insulting is an art form, while others just randomly pull words from a bucket of obscenities.  I had a friend in high school who had written and memorized a page-long insult that took several minutes for me to read, but he could recite it in 20 seconds like he was channeling Dennis Leary.

I once saw an insult comic at a RenFest, who would take money from the audience to insult other members of the audience.  He ended the show with a $100 insult, and it was pretty impressive.  Everyone laughed their heads off, including the one being insulted.  Nobody got offended, because his insults could have applied to anybody.  The comic didn’t actually know the people he was insulting, so they were just words.  His insults didn’t point out physical flaws – he didn’t make fun of anyone’s weight or height or baldness.  Instead he made long, baseless accusations about things he couldn’t possibly know.  So if he ranted at someone for being a chronic masturbator, the words meant nothing because he would have said them to anyone.

If the movie “Roadhouse” has taught me one thing (and hopefully it hasn’t), it’s that most insults are just words designed to provoke a specific response.  If you give in to that response, you’re giving them exactly what they want.  The words themselves mean nothing if the insulter doesn’t know you.  Did he call your mom a bitch?  Well, does this person actually know your mom?  Did he say you have a tiny penis?  Well, has he actually seen you naked?  If the insulter would say these things to anybody to get into a fight, then the words are hollow, and you have no reason to feel disrespected.

The greatest insult has to be from someone who already knows you, or at least knows things about you.  If a customer calls you lazy because you made their burger too slow, they don’t know if you were up all night taking care of the baby and had to mow the lawn that morning before coming into work.  But when your wife calls you lazy, it’s because she knows you didn’t do either of those things.  She also knows you played video games all weekend when you were supposed to be fixing the car, and now she has to take the bus to work.  When she calls you lazy, it should hit hard, and you should feel guilty about it.

The greatest insult, in my opinion, doesn’t involve any offensive words, doesn’t involve any references to your mother, and can only come from someone who knows you at least a little.  And drumroll please, here it is, the worst thing one human being can say to another:

The world would be a better place if you weren’t in it.

That’s it, that’s all, but it has to be said with sincerity.  The idea that your existence not only causes the insulter pain, but many others as well.  That you are doing more harm than good in the world.  That if you would simply fade away, society would benefit.  That anything good you’ve ever done is outweighed by all the bad.

When someone criticizes you for your political opinions, they don’t know all the reasons you voted the way you do.  Maybe you don’t like Politician X, but still vote for them because Politician Y is so much worse.  Maybe you don’t like your candidate’s position on Issue A, but you overlook it because Issue B is so much more important to you.  I get that, I really do.  Sometimes you just have to hold your nose and push that button, electing the lesser of two evils.

Lately I’ve heard a lot of people ask why we can’t just get along, saying we should love our neighbor regardless of their political opinions.  And I want to believe that.  But your politics don’t exist in a vacuum.  Your vote directly helps or hurts people besides yourself.  Sometimes I’m the person your politics hurt.

If you vote for Candidate X, and Candidate X believes that the world would be a better place if people like me weren’t in it, it’s hard not to take that personally.  Your vote is a direct insult to me, the worst possible insult, and it may even put me in physical danger.  So as much as I want to reconcile with the other side, as much as I want to accept people’s politics the same way I accept other differences, it’s a much harder sell.  Politics are a choice, and if you’re making the choice to hurt people like me, we’re going to have a hard time being friends.