Keywords and jargon

I've been thinking of late about keywords and jargon. Jargon has utility. It is effectively spoken shorthand. It allows people in a given group to speak efficiently and briefly while conveying larger themes and ideas. Virtually every profession has it. IT has an endless number of them. DMZ, NAS, "sphere", etc. Often companies themselves will have their own words. When I worked at JPMorgan many moons ago, the process by which one became familiar with the ins and outs of the company was called "getting Morganized." Even married couples and nuclear families have them to refer to events or people in shorthand. Remind me sometime to explain why "Where the hell is parking?" can reduce any member of my family to uncontrollable laughter. This, of course, also applies to politics. I find that when I'm reading or listening to something there are certain keywords that set off my Spidey sense.

Among them are:

• Womyn
• Inappropriate
• Struggle
• Imperialism
• Calling CO2 “pollution”
• Bush regime
• Consensus
• jingoism
• “Speak truth to power”
• “Want to live in a society, not an economy”
• Unsustainable
• Lackey
• Lapdog
• Denialist
• Neo-con
• Hegemony.
• Profiling
• Fundie
• Rovian
• Censored
• “Windfall profits”
• Vibrant
• Gaia
• Green
• Grassroots
• Progressive
• Warmonger
• Irreverent
• Transgressive
• Care
• Divisive
• Zionist
• Entity
• Infidel
• Social Justice
• Advocate
• Empower
• Mean-spirited
• Anything “challenged”
• Agent of Change

These phrases are very helpful as a Bozo filter. Any one of them raises my hackles. Use more than one in the span of a minute and I know I can disengage. The speaker has told me they have no interest in silly things like facts and truth. I'm tempted to make a bingo card for the debates with McCain buzzwords and Obama buzzwords. "My Friends" probably wouldn't make the list for McCain. He opens virtually every sentence with it.

John McCain: "My friends, I'm going to have some breakfast."
Cindy McCain: "John, it's just me."
John McCain: "My friends, would you pass me the Cheerios?"
Cindy McCain: "John, who are you talking to? It's just us."
John McCain: "Thank you, my friends. Next, I'd like some coffee."
Cindy McCain: "I give up."

"Change" would of course be out. In fact, "change" is out for every Democrat from now until Ragnarok. They've been running on "change" as the sum total of their platform for the past 20 years.

Reader(s) are invited to add their own in the comments

Comments

You forgot "fundamentalist" and "swiftboat." But yes I use bozo filters as well, the problem is that they generally screen out so much media content that I find it hard to find something to watch.

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