ad hommin' em: the asshole test

During the years when people were calling each other douchebags, I was still calling people asshole for the reason that douchebags are items which have utility for which we prize them, and yet we were trying to express precisely the opposite about the people to whom we compared them. Assholes are an inevitable but filthy part of us and that seemed to sum up my feelings about that select group of other people termed thus. To ensure that i was meeting the highest standards of rhetoric i implemented a test. when I wanted to call someone an asshole I would first picture one to be sure that it properly evoked their character.
Then, if satisfied, i would proceed to let them know what I thought of them. Surprisingly, the effect was not that I called people assholes less frequently, but that I enjoyed it more. Holding myself to this standard, i had to reconstruct people from the bottom up. The combination of holding myself to this relatively high standard while feeling at least a bit of genuine empathy for them before applying what i knew to be precisely the mot juste retained some of the emotional impact, especially to the phrase "now I feel like an asshole." the idea that i might be called upon to justify myself elevated a vulgar personal attack into a rather rarefied sphere of discourse. if anybody asked me why i had called them an asshole during that period i could have told them why they were. I hope to one3 day see universal adoption of this standard, with high school debate teams hearing the motion "chris is an asshole" without a single giggle and 17 so and so is an asshole motions on the agenda of every public hearing. wouldn't you like to know, really know, who is and who isn't?