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Feudalism is joining the esteemed ranks of now-meaningless words like “violence”, “cancer”, “white supremacy”, and “patriarchy”.

• krapp 7y ago
  > Feudalism is joining the esteemed ranks of now-meaningless words like “violence”, “cancer”, “white supremacy”, and “patriarchy”. All of those words have well-established and commonly understood meanings.
  • weberc2 7y ago
    They do, but that doesn't rebut the fact that they are (recently) commonly used without intelligble meaning.
    • krapp 7y ago
      They are used with intelligible meaning. You and others may disagree with the political or cultural implications behind the way these words are used, but that disagreement doesn't render that rhetoric invalid, or make them meaningless.
      • weberc2 7y ago
        I would love for someone to give meaning to those terms that I might have something concrete to disagree with (or perhaps even agree with--who knows?). The historical, well-known, coherent definitions patently refute their espousers' arguments, and if there was an alternate meaning why can't anyone articulate it coherently? If there are coherent, alternate meanings, they're kept as closely guarded secrets. Why would these people use words, but keep their meanings secret? It seems far more plausible that these people are choosing words with some specific negative emotion attached and applying them to their political opponents, and using the lack of any actual meaning as a sort of plausible deniability.