Especially as we come into another endless election season, politics in this country are becoming increasingly targeted towards various demographics and the pandering begins.
One of the laziest and most annoying ways to do that is to use words that are guaranteed to provoke some kind of reaction simply because of what they mean to us, whether it’s anger, sadness or fear. However, because of the way these words have been used over the course of innumerable media cycles, we’ve simplified them so far that the average person can identify whether they’re “good” or “bad” but has no idea what they actually mean.
For example, “welfare state” is a phrase that’s often thrown at liberal politicians who want to expand government spending into programs that benefit those in lower economic brackets. It’s generally understood by everyone that becoming a welfare state is a bad thing — liberal politicians have to defend their policies against the term, while conservative politicians use it as a weapon. The actual definition of a welfare state, however, is simply a government which has some level of responsibility for the well-being of its citizens. While we throw around the idea that liberalism might lead us to a welfare state as if it might lead us directly into hell as well, I sincerely doubt that you could catch any intelligent politician saying that the government should have nothing to do with its citizens’ well-being.
And this isn’t just a conservative evil, or purely a problem of attack words. It’s currently popular for liberal politicians to shoehorn positive words like “diversity” and “tolerance” into their rhetoric without having any sort of significant voting or speaking record to back up what they’re labeling themselves with. It’s the political vogue for liberals to have these ideas in their speeches, so people who really have no right to claim that they’re pro-social justice are doing it anyway, and in doing so tear a little more of the meaning away from the concepts they’re discussing.
Essentially, because of the way that politicians are using these words and phrases to make themselves look good or their opponents look bad without much regard for using them correctly, words that do have a place in political dialogue are being talked into meaningless oblivion. Unfortunately, it’s easier to use a single word that encapsulates a feeling of uninformed anger or sympathy than it is to create any sort of well-thought-out and logical appeal.