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Speech as a Weapon

In chapter 7, the book talk about abusive and threatening language. It points out how Kent Greenawalt, professor at columbia university  explains the 4 results that come from using abusive speech: 1) threat of immediate violence, 2) offensiveness of the language to those who hear it, 3) psychological hurt to individuals, 4) longterm reinforcement of negative social attitudes. These 4 results are an outline for abusive speech, meaning it will be portrayed differently with different situations but all with the same basic grounding. This is happening right now, and i would say that it's happening and spreading from Twitter. With Trump using Twitter as his platform to talk to the public, as well as addressing situations he agrees with and he doesn't agree with, it makes it a lot more socially acceptable to communicate with public officials this way. Trump is unprofessional and shows this by the way he tweets. When he tweets things like him wresting CNN, or hitting a golf ball at Hillary Clinton in the head, it shows to his followers that this is acceptable and that loosens what is publicly okay to do and not to do (LaFrance). In the past hate speech divides, and this has not changed in present day, we are more divided now than we have been in the last 50 years! If we continue to allow the speech from government officials, even on the internet continue we will all go down hill as a country, and the WORST outcome from top down abusive language could the the civil war 2.



Tedford, Thomas L., and Dale A. Herbeck. Freedom of speech in the United States. 8th ed., State      College, PA, Strata Publishing, Inc., 2017.

 LaFrance, Adrienne. “Donald Trump Is Testing Twitter's Harassment Policy.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 2 July 2017, www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/the-president-of-the-united-states-is-testing-twitters-harassment-policy/532497/.

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