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I realize this is an extremely minor and tangential point, but...
... every "Bible basher" I've met to date knew quite well what "theory" means in a scientific context; "evolution is just a theory" are not, in my experience, the words of scientists expressing a properly humble understanding of the physical world, but of precisely the people who need the scientific definition of "theory" explained to them.
EDIT: I'm open to seeing counterexamples, of course.
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Leftist in this case just "co-opted by the establishment" and if that establishment milieu would have been to the right at the time of co-option would have been on the right. Both of these sites have had owners (until recently with Twitter) that has accepted losses on them. They have never been profitable, yet the establishment through investment have been pouring money into them. We need to stop ourselves and ask why? Is it because these are the factories where our consent is manufactured? Is it the battlefields where culture war is waged? Is it the place where they can put their thumbs on the algorithmic scales to nudge us to consume certain content? Are these the places where our internet culture is formed? Simply put 'Cui Bono?' because the sites themselves aren't profitable but yet investments are poured in!
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Why do you believe that etymology helps you to know what a word actually means?
Etymology is interesting, but it’s almost totally unrelated to meaning. Even Websters dictionary doesn’t try to do that — they’re explicitly descriptive, not prescriptive.
Words are defined by how they’re used. That’s it.
Yes, it’s frustrating when people intentionally use the wrong word trying to sway public opinion, and it’s frustrating when you can’t pin down people on what they mean because of shifting definitions. But none of that is new nor unique to the left.
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I love etymology too but thinking that because trans activists use the term "deadnaming" it means that they actually think that transition is like death is kind of like thinking that when a guy says "what's up, motherfuckers!" to his friends, he is implying that they fuck mothers.
The psychology of how and why people use words is often very little connected to those words' etymology.
There is a danger in getting so deep into etymology that one turns it almost into a form of numerology or astrology, believing that it explains more than it actually does because one can always come up with a plausible theory for any given supposed connection. Same with evolutionary psychology, I guess.
And yet a pro-transition perspective
Emphasis mine.
It's like the scene you get in movies when tarot readings are involved. The Death card comes up. The reader says something like "It also means change". Invariably turns out it means death.
Not very different from rhetoric around being born again, or simply accepting Christ: "God's solution to the problem of my sinful self is to get rid of my old self and make me a new person in Christ." But if anyone posted here equating that with physical death, they would quite properly laughed off the stage.
Arguably trans activists play fast and loose with the figurative/literal meaning of death for political footing. It's one thing for your opponents to disagree with you, but for them to genocide you (sic) gets a bit more attention. I do not doubt many using these terms imagine they are being very sincere and good-faith.
Edit： After reading further here I see that nothing I have written here adds anything new.
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Oh hey, that's me.
I have to agree with the gist of your post. In retrospect, I don't even know whether the other posters were pointing at the final death. The words aren't automatically hyperbolic, it is hyperbolic to say that it is equally bad for a kid to transition as it is for them to actually die for real.
I find it interesting that you say: "it becomes possible to simultaneously say things and not say them at all"
This is exactly what was happening in my situation. The people I was responding to were just as complicit in using metaphors carelessly for impact. It's not exclusively the left's fault that language is a mess. Every culture war meme on the right, "groomer," "murder" (in the case of abortion) etc, are chosen dynamically for impact in the culture war. Not because they immediately create a deep understanding of the exact concept, but because they create an understanding of the concept that is predisposed to create favorable implications for their side of the culture war regardless of root level truth value.
I think your arguments that this is a disease are excellent. We should endeavor to communicate more clearly. I think your etiology is flawed. It's the culture war itself that breeds the weaponized language.
In the case of "murder" I think conservatives are using the ordinary definition of the word ("the crime of unlawfully and unjustifiably killing a person") and the disagreement is not over definitions but rather an object level debate about whether abortion is, in fact, murder.
In the case of "groomer" this is clearly a redefinition of the term, and I believe Rufo has admitted this. He popularized the term with the explicit understanding that the term is being redefined in an attempted mimicry or parody of the left's propensity to redefine words.
But I can't think of an example of the right doing what the left frequently does, which is to redefine a term while denying that the term has been redefined. I'm curious if you can think of any examples.
Sure, "Fake News" being applied to biased news, the term "Cancel Culture" being applied to people calling you a jerk on twitter, "Patriot"... which is it again? Nationalism? Libertarianism? The status quo? Just slaps onto any right wing cause for ingroup points. "Socialism" meaning any form of social safety net, "Freedom" and "Liberty" being extended to Laissez-faire economics.
The list just goes on and on because this is a very common and effective strategy that people use to argue for their cause. They staple a metaphor with their preferred affect to their cause or the enemy cause and run with it. The connotation of the word shifts and becomes ingrained, and its history is forgotten as generations are onboarded into the linguistic tech.
Usually the culprit doesn't think they're redefining anything when they do it, because to them the metaphor is apt. They honestly think their cause is good for the same reasons that the thing they stapled to it are good, or vice versa, and that they have found a new valid use case. Meanwhile another person looking at the metaphor, might not see the same implications or values implicit in its components, and disagree that it is apt, seeing it as a redefinition.
I think "socialism" is a good example, thanks. I could quibble with the other examples but I think this one hits the nail on the head.
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When you take your own 'culture' for granted it might seem like others are 'distorting' the meaning of words. When in reality you were always a fish swimming in water.
The dialectic of 'white' left-right politics is over. The battle lines drawn around slight ingroup neurodivergence or the slightly different financial incentives of two neighboring municipalities that expresses itself as mild disagreement over questions like taxation and where to place the bridge are outdated. We are in the throes of a total redefinition of 'western' politics.
It's no longer a few teams fighting in the same sports league. We are now fighting between leagues over who gets funding. It's no use complaining that the basketball players are using their hands, those guys simply don't see European 'football' rules as applying to them. In fact, they see them as restrictive. And why shouldn't they? Why on earth should a basketball player accept a ruleset that takes away all their advantages? You can argue that your 'feet only' sport is the best or whatever, but that's obviously self serving even if you very dearly believe it to be true or even if it is by some objective metric true.
A real lie example of this where I live is trans people. If you belong to this group, in my very 'western' country, you can argue for special privileges for your group. These don't apply to anyone else. You are not seen as a political party or anything of the sort, that would otherwise exist in the 'normal' western political dialectic, no. Instead you are seen through the lens of 'victimary discourse'. And because you have a lot of marketing behind your victimary narrative, people cave in to your demands of receiving preferential treatment at the doctors.
The same is true for immigrants or any non-white. They exist as themselves. They advocate for themselves. They form group coalitions, they weave an animating myth of victimhood and grievance against white people and then they try their darndest to funnel everyone behind their cause. This dialectic isn't born out of circumstance or the natural curve of history. This is a pathological mode of group bias.
There is no onus on one group to adopt the language tradition of another. If it doesn't suit your group, don't use the language. Find something else. The outgroup is always evil, no need to call them good.
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This link seems broken
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A bunch of interesting points, but what's going on with the headline?
Are you just fishing for clicks there?
It's what TVTropers of yore called a self-demonstrating example, I believe.
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That's the exact opposite of the "leftist memes" discourse, which posits that the right wing is able to condense its memes to few poignants words and images and leftist memes are far too wordy to actually read.
Memes and mottos have to be witty. Short rants can simply be babbling and cathartic, they are different mediums.
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1 word is still fewer than 25.
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