Students arrested during the police crackdown on protests at universities in New York City last week were denied water and food for 16 hours, according to two faculty members at Columbia University’s Barnard College who collected reports from students who were inside.
Other students reported that they were beaten by New York City Police Department officers after their arrests and taken to the hospital for injuries before being returned to central booking. Photos of the injuries were provided to The Intercept.
Other students reported that they were held in mouse-infested cells, along with the general population of the jail. The students told the professors that they weren’t given water or food for 16 hours and that at least one student was left without shoes for the same period of time.
I find bully to be an apt description. They habitually belittle, intimidate, or attack people perceived to be weaker than them.
Bastard means unpleasant or despicable. I think that’s somewhat lacking by comparison.
For its schoolyard prevalence alone, I don’t believe “bully” quite illustrates the point, and bastard is far too common, agreed. Whatever happened to santorum, or smeg, etc.? These days, we seem to rely on spitting out derogatory pre-chewed gum, and there’s so much more to English alone — not to mention how many other languages have had cause for coining a phrase or term for whatever moment in particular?
Get creative. Read a book. See the world. Learn to fuck in different tongues. Swear like it was your birthright. (Plot twist: it is.)
Those are certainly more colorful. I use bully for its descriptive accuracy, but your point still stands. The average person knows fewer than one eighth of the words in English language, and use a tenth of that daily. There’s plenty of room for improvement in our insults and condemnations.
Fuck yeah