Is it just me or has "rabid" now segued into "militant"? [View All]

[Fumesucker]

"Rabid" was like comfortable old shoes to this atheist, heck I even used it as part of an online screen name a few times.. Rabid Atheist Baby Eater 666 or something like that.

Being compared to an animal that is quite literally foaming at the mouth crazy and that is killed on sight by most humans because the slightest scratch from one can possibly be deadly in a horrendous way was kind of flattering really if you looked at it in just the right way and maybe squinted a smidgen.

But now I find that I'm a "militant", to my mind a rather more sinister concept, a person who is prepared to go killing in a religious crusade or jihad, as in the militants we are hearing about on a nearly daily basis being Nobel Peace bombed in Afghanistan, Pakistan and too many other places for my rapidly ossifying brain to keep track of (Yemen?, Lichtenstein?).

I suppose I'm wondering if the choice of "militant" over "rabid" is an ultimately conscious one that's being driven by someone or group and spread deliberately or if it's just a totally unconscious attempt to find the worst thing you can think of to compare someone to, used to be rabid but we're not having a multi trillion dollar war against rabid animals, we reserve that for militants.