Turn the switch on

[Ersatz]

I've noticed that among my friends and family, when talking about the world, there are some key words that initiate an automatic panic response that I can notice in their physiology, their speech patterns, and their reactions to the rest of the conversation. Among conservatives, these are words such as liberal, help, worker, international(or global), rational, and poor. These are fairly common words but in the context of having a serious conversation (doesn't matter if it's about politics, religion, economics, etc...) even if I'm not saying a sentence like "As a liberal, I believe that we must find a rational and international way to help the poor of the global south", they still are put on the defensive. I could say a sentence like "An international team of astronauts installed solar panels today.", and for the rest of the conversation be constantly stopped and argued with at every turn. For liberals, the words tend to be "corporate, engagement, tradition, smoke, and glass(?). I don't come to any conclusions about why these reactions occur and I don't have any sort of scientific proof of this. What I do have is many political friends of many different stripes. Being the token libertarian in the group, I always get placed as moderator in any conversation (if he's a libertarian, he must be a centrist[cough-bs-cough]) and I see these words escalate the emotions of a conversation. The only reason I bother to notice this is because there is such a shift that occurs- almost like a light switch or something. What do people think about this?

[Monte314]

Human beings manage the complexity in their lives by categorizing things. If I can label complex entities, and thereby infer their likely properties, I am in control.

This usually works pretty well with "things", so we try it with people, too. Of course, it doesn't work nearly as well there.

When I hear someone using "code words" and attempt to categorize them, I will probably only be partially successful. But I do it nonetheless. And so do you. This is a natural human coping mechanism that is not likely to change.

[Ersatz]

I used to have a bodily panic reaction to the word "technology". This stemmed from fear of being out of control. I don't know why, maybe a scary article or a bad encounter with computers at an early age left me intimidated.
As I grew up and became more educated, I learned to place this word in context and the reaction stopped. When people hear these words come from people in authority, they see them as huge forces and not as mere words. I think that people associate these things with other concepts which are genuinely troubling but I am just flabbergasted that people who came up through the same educational system as I did still allow themselves to be so sensationalized by words!

[eternaltriangle]

I was recently posting something on a political blog that is sometimes interesting, but largely dominated by Democrats. I gave some reasons for being skeptical about something (specifically, I was skeptical about the existence and importance of a 15 point party ID advantage of the GOP in NY-20). Immediately I was attacked for this position (the 15 point party ID advantage for the GOP was a talking point that makes the present tie look impressive - the fact that Obama won there by 3 points, and Gillibrand (D-NY) by 23 makes it less so).

Specifically, I was accused of being extremely stupid and lazy for knowing where that data could be found (the data does show the existence of such a lead in voter registration, though clearly that lead hasn't panned out for the GOP), of being a conservative/Republican, of supporting abstinence-only education and being a climate change denier.

I think talking points are a way that political parties create ever more switches in their more politically active membership. The blogosphere is a fairly good medium for spreading talking points - and, because it limits rather than facilitates interactions between ideologically diverse audiences (people seem to prefer to talk to people that agree with them), it reinforces the stereotypes they have about non-believers.

Other people are less adaptive. I think my mother decided where she stood in politics in the 1980's. However, one of the main parties that existed then is no longer around (the Progressive-Conservative party merged with the Canadian Alliance to become the Conservative party). Whenever I talk about Canadian politics she has to be reminded "wait, Conservative, that's PC, right?" If she knows who the "PC" is, she can figure the rest out (I don't think ideology makes a lot of sense to her).

Some words that set me off include... diversity (probably going to talk about how bad white people are - is it just me or do educated white folks love talking about how much they love non-white folks with other white folks), imperialism (great, here comes the Noam Chomsky rant), any racial slur (must... exit... conservation...), fractional reserve banking (yeah yeah, who is John Galt blah blah blah), fascist (some dumbass lefty who has no concept of what fascism was about), socialist (probably some American conservative who has no idea what actual socialism looks like), global (probably a very boring person with vapid and unworkable pronouncements), productivity (probably somebody I can relate to), human rights (some annoying twerp who is going to tell me about various inane violations, probably anti-American), "working families" (lefty), taxpayers (righty), terror/terrorism (probably followed by "you gotta support the president"), sovereignty/national liberation (probably some apologist for dictators), and Zionist (probably an anti-semite, definitely a rant about how crappy Israel is).

[phej]

I believe the word that describes how keywords works is shibboleth.

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I hate political shibboleths. It prevents people from having civil conversations because when someone hears some word, they latch on it, and then spout how it is evil or good without considering the tradeoffs; or worse, they will demean anybody who has a contrary opinion.

[JeffersonFawkes]

In the modern world words are constantly reworded and redefined to more and more severe meanings so as to swing a person from one side to another. Some words become part of a clique such as business buzz words, but part of the reaction your noticing has a lot to do with both intentional and unintentional conditioning to link words not to literal definitions, but to raw emotion. Modern marketing and classic propaganda is all about by-passing the mind through emotion, and than linking that emotion to buzz words. Like a sort of hypnosis with a key-word.

[Hanfgeist]

I don't think the term Shibboleth quite covers it, these keywords which evoke a subliminal fear response are known as 'Fnords'; according to popular conspiracy theory, they are embedded everywhere in the media and designed to keep people afraid and off balance, the better to control them. You become free, when, like the original poster, you can 'see the Fnords' .......

(Fnords may also take the form of imagery in TV and films.....)

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