I am writing this with my teeth clenched, my eyes squinted, and my fingers striking the keys harder than they should. I know only the choir will hear this sermon, yet I write it anyway. If nothing else, it is a vent.
The English language today has been weaponized. Ordinary words have become dog whistles, ideological tests, or verbal traps that make honest conversation nearly impossible. In trying to control the narrative, we have stripped words of their utility.
Talking about discrimination is risky. Words like racism, sexism, colorism, sizeism, ageism, ableism, marginalized, disadvantaged, and oppression now signal ideology more than reality. Terms like underrepresented, bias, orientation, identity, race, gender, intersectionality, POC, descent, and minority shift meaning depending on the speaker. Discourse becomes a minefield.
Other words demand ideological conformity. Microaggressions, allyship, diversity, inclusion, equity, systemic, white supremacy, colonialism, decolonization, and land acknowledgment are wielded as litmus tests. Even merit, fair play, and quota are reinterpreted as either oppressive tools or necessary correctives.
Critiques of social structures such as heteronormativity, cisnormativity, patriarchy, transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism serve to sort people into categories of enlightened or irredeemable. Activist language like neurodiversity, environmental justice, restorative justice, trigger warning, safe space, cultural appropriation, and performative activism mark tribal boundaries more than they solve problems.
The same is true in psychology and gender. Gaslighting, implicit bias, intersectional feminism, non-binary, genderqueer, misogyny, misogynoir, anti-racism, critical race theory, whiteness, Latinx, BIPOC, QTPOC, deadnaming, misgendering, and gender dysphoria have been weaponized to demand allegiance. Disagreement is treated as bigotry.
Activism itself is saturated with loaded terms. Body positivity, slacktivism, virtue signaling, call-out culture, cancel culture, emotional labor, food justice, health equity, indigenous rights—all of these words are used as shields or swords, depending on who wields them. Even resistance and protest, once celebrated as pillars of democracy, now mean entirely different things depending on who is marching and why.
Health and medicine are not exempt. Political labels such as democracy, fascism, authoritarianism, Christian nationalism, and insurrection are deployed to create fear, not dialogue. Nations themselves have become triggers: Russia, Ukraine, Israel, China, even Canada. Mention Trump, Biden, Putin, Congress, or Elon Musk, and discussion collapses. The figure becomes either idol or villain, with nothing in between.
Even moral language has been tainted. Virtue, tradition, submission, family, homemaking, happiness, good and evil, right and wrong were once pillars of meaning but are now recast as political signals.
So how do we move toward understanding and compromise when the vocabulary itself is a battlefield? Words once meant for clarity and connection are now weapons. The wrong word at the wrong moment is no longer a slip; it is a declaration.
We need to start rejecting the machinery of triggers, not as private sensitivities but as deliberate schemes to fracture society. If we must be intolerant of anything, let it be the forces that back us into corners where division and hostility are the only possible outcomes.
Reject justice that requires a victim. Reject hatred and disparagement as solutions.
If our words cannot heal, they will continue to wound. And if we allow language to remain a battlefield, we will keep losing, not to our enemies, but to ourselves.