Naming prejudices and the full moon

Many names for racial or national groups start off as more or less descriptive or as abbreviations or metonymies for foreigners with curious dietary practices or common names (such as le bifsteak for a 'Brit' or Mick for an Irish male or Jimmy for a Glaswegian). Many other names are abusive from the start, often coined in times of war or conflict, or after conquest as expressions of contempt for those who are subordinate or inferior. But even the neutral descriptive terms come with an attitude, and the attitude contaminates the descriptive term so that it becomes an expression of racial prejudice, and so a new term is invented, but it is tracked by and then overtaken by the negative attitude, which then contaminates the term, so a new one is devised, but then is tracked by ... until there is no longer racial or sectional contempt. But political correctness can at least raise awareness and make people think about the cultural prejudies they hardly know they have.

You don't have to be drunk to fall into a ditch (though presumably it helps) but if you leave a house late at night on this island and walk back home you are liable to fall into one or walk into a wall if you don't have a torch because the dark is as dark as dark can be, especially if the sky is overcast with cloud. Thus one sees the benefit of a moonlit night which, as a townie I neglected except for its aesthtic aspects. The point is that you can see. On the other hand, I suppose there are circumstances when the concealing darkness is an advantage. One is close to anient times here .. the danger of attack, the advantage of surprise, it is still in the air, somehow, though the local citizenry is of course benign.