4

Eco

Ads are full of loaded terms. We understand that "new" things are better, and "value" things are cheap and low quality, and that things with "realistic cheese flavoring" are the best.

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"And this oven has no trans fats."
"Is it high-def?"
"It is high-def, yes."

But the loaded term (prefix, really) I'll specifically draw your attention to is "eco." When you see a product with the word "eco" in its name, you know that that means the product is environmentally friendly. Its renewable, something, sustainable, something, tested only on ugly animals, whatever. You know. Environmentally friendly. Whether the product actually is environmentally friendly doesn't really matter; so long as it has "eco" in its name, you'll think it is. This is part of a broader trend called "greenwashing," and it's effective basically because you like thinking you're saving the environment, even if you don't really know how the environment works.

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"SAVE THE WHALES. SAVE THE WHALES. SAVE THE WHALES."

3

Victim

The word "victim" has become increasingly banned or restricted from being used in courtrooms. Which sounds kind of insane, the kind of thing that fuels both lawyer jokes and massive public mistrust of the judicial system. But when you think about it, you can kind of see the point; calling someone a victim before the trial has determined whether a crime has happened is obviously premature, and it could coax jurors into thinking the crime has happened before that's been proved. Increasingly, lawyers and witnesses are being asked to replace the word "victim" with "complainant."

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"May I remind the witness to please refer to it not as a stab wound but as an owwie of disputed provenance."

2

Government Spending

Reasonable people can have serious and legitimate differences of opinion about what, exactly, their government should and should not be responsible for. I've got a pretty firm opinion of how large governments should be myself (massive, like planet-crushingly massive), but I acknowledge that intelligent people may feel otherwise. And that's fine and that's fair and if it wasn't for the fact that we all use the most twisted language possible to describe this issue, we'd almost certainly get along and not want to kill each other.

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"STOP WORDING DIFFERENTLY THAN ME."

1

Job Creator

When discussing tax breaks or other policies that benefit business owners (or the wealthy), it doesn't take long for someone to call this group of people "job creators." The reasoning is straightforward and not completely illogical. If business owners have more money, they'll be able to invest more in their businesses. Growing businesses need more workers, and that need means more jobs. If that sounds simple, it is. If that sounds childishly simple, it's that too. If it sounds too childishly simple of an argument to prop up billions of dollars of tax breaks, well that's just one of those things about this age that we're going to have to live with.

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"Oh selfie. What have the elderly done to us this time?"

What's wrong with that reasoning? Well, let's start with the motivation. Business owners don't invest money in their businesses for fun. They're doing it to make more money. If a business can make more money by making more jobs, it will definitely do that. Hooray! The system works! But if it can make more money by firing a bunch of people it will do that too. Boooooooo system. And if it can make more money by sending jobs to Asia to be done by low-paid workers toiling in inhumane environments, it will do that most of all.

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"Hooray system."

To be fair, there are plenty of examples of loaded language on the flipside of this equation. "Greedy owners," or "obscene profits," or "exploited workers," are all phrases that make pretty harsh judgment calls about something which may or may not be true. And there are circumstances when public policy that supports businesses (or even the wealthy) is justifiable. But let's just can it on the "job creators" thing. The wealthy were only doing that accidentally.

Chris Bucholz is a Cracked columnist and your best eco-friend. Join him on Facebook or Twitter or don't, depending on how you feel about that.