According to the newspaper report, Stanford’s website administrators have embarked on an “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative”. Under this initiative, users of the website must not be so described because the word “users” might make some of them think they were being compared with drug addicts (who are themselves better described as “people who deal with substance abuse issues”).
Other words and phrases to be excised by Stanford include “rule of thumb” (it allegedly refers to an old English law which allowed men to beat their wives), “ballsy” (links personality traits to anatomy), “long time no see” (mocks indigenous people and Chinese), and even the now famous, fairly new expression “trigger warning” (can “cause stress about what is to follow”).
This story could have arisen only in the West, and would probably be incomprehensible to all but an elite few in the countries which featured in the four preceding stories – China, Russia, Belarus, Afghanistan and even democratic India.
And this is why Russia and China are increasingly distancing themselves from the West. The West is incapable of introspection and unable to see what is on the horizon.