They come from the left. They come from the right. They come from the posts. They come from the comments sections. They come from the articles in the daily paper. These are loaded words that are used in contemporary political debate like little bombs cut through the rest of our arguments leaving little sense in their wake. Talk about, say, Bush’s minions and you’ve made your case that he’s the evil, mustache-twirling baddie and you don’t have to treat him as a man who, however much you might have disagreed, made choices that he thought were right. Talk about Obama’s cronies, and you dismiss the motives of the people around him by turning them into some cackling cabal of evil who couldn’t possibly be acting from principle.

Now, allowing our elected officials to be humans rather than cardboard cut-out baddies doesn’t absolve them from their mistakes and bad-judgement. It’s just to say that attacking the person isn’t the best way to refute their arguments and ideals. It’s intellectually lazy and unconvincing.

These are the words that are driving me crazy right now. These are the words that, it seems, I can’t escape these days even though they almost never bring any substance to the debate.

Crony. Cronies.

Minion. Minions.

Regime. Fascist. Nazi.

Racist. Sexist. Ageist. Whatever-ist.

The first two pairs generally sound as if they belong in some overwrought political play where our heros and villains are drawn in the broad strokes of a Victorian era melodrama. Your point will be better received and understood if you don’t use over-the-top language that can detract from your argument or even discredit your argument with folks on the other side of the aisle.

With the third set, the words are often used incorrectly and sound like they belong somewhere in an overwrought G8 summit protest where protestors-by-avocation tend to push their disparate agendas (regardless of the tenuous relation of the agenda and the event) in annoyingly ill-considered ways like crashing the windows of every Starbucks in the area. They have created this weird little monoculture of people who bounce from anti-war protest to anti-G8 protest to anti-whatever protest with the same set of socialist literature, anti-US sloganeering, childlike view of politic realities, and same giant paper-mache puppets no matter the occasion. In that way, they are reminiscent of the moronic Wesboro Baptist Church types who see the entirety of the world’s issues as a referendum on God’s feelings about gays. They aren’t serious people and they shouldn’t be treated as such; anyone who adopts their linguistic tics faces the danger of putting themselves in that same, ignore-at-will category.

Likewise, the last set are rarely used correctly. They are knee-jerk reactions to any negative unpleasant negative commentary when the debate turns a little rough. It’s easier to claim the moral high ground with an assertion of racism than it is to argue the point--say, for example, by claiming that opponents of Obama’s health care reform push were racists when it is clear that those same opponents worked hard to ensure that the Clinton health care package failed. It isn’t racism (or sexism), but a genuine political difference--but if you claim that the opponents are racists, you won’t have to refute their arguments.

That said, real racism, sexism, and fascism do exist. Calling out racism where it exists--say, in the kinds of offensive comments that black conservatives receive about the real nature of their racial heritage when they espouse something other than the orthodox line of accepted racial politics--is important. Ask someone like Condi Rice if racism exists in America and I’m sure she’ll say yes. Ask her to describe the racism that she has faced in her adult life, though, and her answer might be a bit surprising. I would doubt that it would be racially oriented attacks from the KKK; I would guess that it would be racially-oriented attacks from liberal political commentators. Those folks weren’t so much interested in the content of her character except inasmuch as that character could be viewed through the distorting lens of racial politics.

So, yes, these things exist, but be damned careful when breaking out the accusations because the power in those words diminishes every time they are used improperly.