No shouting...

I saw this cartoon the other day and it made me think that a phenomenon I'd noticed recently might not just be a figment of my curmudgeon old mind. 

The thing that I'm talking about is how younger people seem to equate a verbal disagreement (that's not going their way) with "shouting". Much like extreme left wingers often shout  "Racist" or "Sexist" in order to shut down dissenting arguments, seemingly regardless of the actual position of their opponents. I've had several disputes recently with my teenage kids where it's ended up with them asking me (and my wife) to stop shouting at them (ironically often in a louder voice), when quite demonstrably we haven't raised our voices one single decibel. Is this a new thing? Are we entering an era where it's customary to deflect from losing an argument by redefining English words, like shout, racist, sexist etc. and then to use them as an ad-hominem tactic against your opponent.

I'm put in mind of the excellent Monty Python sketch about witches, a parody of many current cultural and political debates in my view, burn-em I say...