When read without putting political correctness above all else, the comment from bowlofpetunias is quite civilized.

I think it brings up some very good points about how non-technical people and technical people can interpret situations involving technology in very different ways, for example. And I think it's actually trying to hold the technical community to a much higher standard when it comes to justifying actions that society at large will very likely disagree with.

It's far more harmful and disruptive to see the perfectly legitimate argument of bowlofpetunias being totally ignored and even obscured, merely because some people find a single word in the comment to potentially be politically incorrect or potentially offensive.

Discussion is much better when the focus is on the argument or topic itself, rather than going off on political correctness tangents over a single word in somebody's comment.