“It’s so terrible that autistics have no empathy,” cry four hundred thousand people who have never once made an ounce of effort to empathize with an autistic person
you can’t disconnect words like “moron”, “idiot”, and “dumb” from their original meanings. they are ableist words. and continuing to use them in a derogatory fashion is ableist.
calling someone a “moron” is comparing them to someone who is disabled, usually someone with an intellectual or learning disability. so if that’s used in a derogatory way, you are saying that the disabled person is worthless, or whatever other word you would use instead of “moron”. even if the person you’re directing the word to is abled themselves.
comparing abled people to disabled people as a joke, or as a method of bullying is ableist. end of.