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Notes -
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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