08-29-2024, 05:37 PM
Yeah, there are a lot of words that this kind of thing frequently applies to - especially in the realm of politics and political philosophy & ideology (e.g., "communism", "socialism", "capitalism", "anarchy", "liberalism", etc.).
For example, one person hears "capitalism" and thinks "bankers, billionaires, and assorted other cronies who hang out on the corner at the intersection of Wall Street and the government", while another person hears the same word and thinks "voluntary entrepreneurialism engaged in by free people unfettered by extortionate government-imposed bureaucratic managerialism" - and yet another person may think yet another thing, and so on.
Ultimately, words (all words - even including relatively innocuous and unassuming ones such as "a" or "the" or "and") are just arbitrary conceptual labels, composed of arbitrary vibrations (when spoken) or arbitrary squiggles (when written). For any given word, there will be greater or lesser agreement about what concepts the relevant vibrations and squiggles are supposed (more or less exactly) to denote. For better and for worse, that is an inescapably inherent feature of how any "general purpose" language (such as English) will function - otherwise, it couldn't be "general purpose".
Speaking for myself, I fully support and endorse referring to Kamala Harris, et al. as "communists" or the like (à la James Lindsay, Xi Van Fleet, et al.), and I also fully support and endorse taking exception to those references (à la Connor O'Keeffe, Dave Smith, et al.) - so long as those making such references or taking such exceptions are able to usefully specify (or clarify) what they mean when called upon to do so. Beyond that, games of "dueling dictionaries" are just pointlessly semantic dick-wagging contests.
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