Wittgenstein somewhere wrote that old words should be periodically taken out of circulation like debased coins. His aphorism came to mind as I watched this video by Thomas Wictor. It opens: “Breitbart goes full racist, Jew-hating white supremacist” and then shows Breitbart articles about Trump’s constant pandering to pretty much everyone except heterosexual white men. It’s apparently “full racist, Jew-hating white supremacist” to point out that Trump basically ignores the demographic that essentially was America (or a great part thereof) until very very recently.

I grow weary of words like racist, anti-Semitic, white supremacist. We should have a moratorium on such words for a generation or two. I would add “democracy” to the list, a word that has come to mean anything I like just as “fascism” now means anything I don’t like.

The rule should be, when connotation excessively outweighs denotation the word has become effectively useless.