On name-calling and ad hominem, the bottom-feeders of Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement

Yesterday, I was listening to the radio, and a psychiatrist was talking about people who hear an insult and cannot separate themselves from it. He was restating an old idea: the mature response to an insult is not to feel hurt, but to see that the person making insults is suffering.
Insults have fascinated me since I was called a nigger-lover as a boy: insults tell you little about their target, but they tell you everything about what the insulter fears. Since I had been taught that loving eve...