By Noah Rothman
Friday, August 22, 2025
It says something about modern American political culture
that the constitutionally nonconfrontational think tank Third Way, an
organization that “champions
moderate policy and political ideas,” made more news for itself than it has
in years when it finally picked a fight.
In a memo that has captured the attention of the national press, Third Way attempted to police the
Democratic Party’s language policers, even if its authors applied a gentle
touch when doing so.
“In reality, most Democrats do not run or govern on
wildly out-of-touch social positions,” the
memo read. “But voters would be excused to believe we do because of the
words that come out of our mouths—words which sound like we are hiding behind
unfamiliar phrases to mask extreme intent.”
What follows is the hilariously long, but by no means
exhaustive, list of words, phrases, and expressions that expose their users as
cloistered ideologues consumed with hostility for the median American voter:
Privilege
Violence (as
in “environmental violence”)
Dialoguing
Othering
Triggering
Microaggression/assault/invalidation
Progressive stack
Centering
Safe space
Holding space
Body shaming
Subverting norms
Systems of oppression
Critical theory
Cultural appropriation
Postmodernism
Overton Window
Heuristic
Existential threat to [climate, the planet, democracy,
the economy]
Radical transparency
Small ‘d’ democracy
Barriers to participation
Stakeholders
The unhoused
Food insecurity
Housing insecurity
Person who immigrated
Birthing person/inseminated person
Pregnant people
Chest feeding
Cisgender
Deadnaming
Heteronormative
Patriarchy
LGBTQIA+
Latinx
BIPOC
Allyship
Intersectionality
Minoritized communities
Justice-involved
Carceration
Incarcerated people
Involuntary confinement
Of course, some of this language is revealing only of the
user’s extensive vocabulary. No one should recoil at the use of the word
“heuristic,” for example, as a way to describe a Socratic process or simple
trial and error. The problem is not with the whole brevity thing, but, rather, the (possibly defensible)
assumption that its use is an exercise in condescension. It often depends on
the context.
That said, the vast majority of this jargon is
indefensible. It sounds like nails on a chalkboard to the average ear, and it is
deliberately exclusionary. The ever-shifting linguistic landscape is navigable
only to those who are inside or in proximity to the highest echelons of the
academy. That’s the whole point of this enterprise; these linguistic flourishes
represent barriers to entry into respectable discourse. It is a
credential for those whose actual credentials are providing a rapidly
depreciating return on capital investment. Why else do you think the last
educational cohort that reliably votes Democratic is Americans
with postgraduate degrees?
And yet, if the Democratic Party really did attempt to
enforce Third Way’s recommendations, it could very well backfire. As the memo
notes, instead of these terms (and many other buzzwords that serve only to
advertise the user’s membership in the progressive tribe), Democratic office
seekers should use “plain, authentic language,” even at the risk of irritating
“activists and advocacy organizations.” This assumes the existence of a
distinction between Democratic aspirants for high office and the activist class.
Really, if they’re not one and the same, there is usually significant overlap
at the staff level.
Moreover, while these words do convey
inauthenticity, they are so thoroughly internalized by their users that forcing
them to fish for more earthy verbiage is far more likely to come across as
insincere. Watching the average “critical queer studies” major’s gears turn as
he queries his memory banks for a monosyllabic way to accuse the United States
of omnidirectional bigotry will be just as painful as letting him roll with the
jargon drilled into him in that freshman seminar.
In short, it’s not the language that’s the problem. It’s
a symptom of the problem, which has more to do with the contempt that the
people Third Way is talking to have for their neighbors. The words they use to
convey that animus are truly secondary.
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