Very good post! I think there's a broader discursive malady in play here, whereby people retreat behind layers of abstraction, enshrining signifiers as things unto themselves. One sees this in the endless quibbling over terms with political or moral valences, e.g. debating whether something is fascist, as if evil can be thwarted like Rumpelstiltskin. Actually reckoning with particulars is difficult and rife with ambiguity, whereas bandying about tidy, emotionally charged terms yields immediate satisfaction; a sort of intellectual onanism, if you will.
Very good post! I think there's a broader discursive malady in play here, whereby people retreat behind layers of abstraction, enshrining signifiers as things unto themselves. One sees this in the endless quibbling over terms with political or moral valences, e.g. debating whether something is fascist, as if evil can be thwarted like Rumpelstiltskin. Actually reckoning with particulars is difficult and rife with ambiguity, whereas bandying about tidy, emotionally charged terms yields immediate satisfaction; a sort of intellectual onanism, if you will.