This is, in part, a tribute to George Carlin and his fascination with the English language.
Now, before anybody gets the wrong idea, I never met George Carlin. Everything I know about him comes from watching his performances, his interviews, his speaking engagements, and listening to the people who knew him. And I also understand something that a lot of people tend to forget: George Carlin didn’t just walk onto a stage and magically produce a comedy special.
Like many great comedians, there were drafts, revisions, conversations, observations, and countless hours of refinement. The version people saw on stage was usually the final version, not the first one.
One of the things that fascinated Carlin was language. How people changed words. How words changed meaning. How language could be used to clarify something, and how language could also be used to hide something.
Sometimes language helps us communicate.
Sometimes language helps us avoid communicating.
And sometimes language gets used as a shortcut to dismiss people entirely.
That’s what this article is about.
Not whether any particular political party is right.
Not whether any particular social movement is right.
Not whether I am right.
It’s about what happens when labels become substitutes for arguments.
Let’s start with one of my favorites: mansplaining.
Now ladies, before you roll your eyes and immediately accuse me of doing exactly that, let me acknowledge something. The behavior the word describes absolutely exists.
There are men who confidently explain subjects they barely understand.
There are women who confidently explain subjects they barely understand.
Anyone who has worked with the public for more than ten minutes has encountered both.
The problem isn’t the existence of the behavior.
The problem is when the label becomes the response.
Sometimes a person isn’t being condescending. Sometimes they simply disagree. Sometimes they have more experience. Sometimes they have information you don’t have. Sometimes they’re trying to explain a complicated concept in a way that the average person can understand.
That’s not necessarily mansplaining.
Sometimes that’s just explaining.
And if your first response is a label instead of a rebuttal, then we’ve already stopped discussing the idea and started discussing the person.
Which seems to happen a lot these days.
And as a reminder, folks, we live in a constitutional republic with a democratic process. Laws change. Policies change. Rights change. Society changes.
You don’t have to agree with every change.
You do have to accept that change is part of the process.
What interests me is the growing habit of assigning emotions and motives to entire groups of people.
Terms like “white rage” are examples of this.
Now, there are certainly angry people in the world.
There are angry white people.
There are angry black people.
There are angry men.
There are angry women.
There are angry rich people and angry poor people.
Human beings are occasionally angry creatures.
But assigning a single emotional state to millions of people because they share some demographic characteristic doesn’t really explain anything.
It mostly creates another box to put people in.
And people rarely fit neatly into the boxes we create for them.
Then we move into another favorite category: science denier.
Or climate denier.
Or whatever variation happens to be popular this week.
Now before anybody gets excited, I’m not arguing against science.
Science is supposed to be a process.
Observation.
Testing.
Challenge.
Verification.
Revision.
Science isn’t supposed to be a list of approved conclusions that nobody is allowed to question.
And the moment someone asks a question and the response becomes “science denier,” we’re no longer discussing the evidence. We’re discussing the person asking the question.
The label becomes the shortcut.
The label becomes the dismissal.
The label becomes the substitute for the conversation.
And once again, we’re no longer talking about ideas.
We’re talking about people.
The same thing happens in other areas.
Sometimes accuracy matters more than comfort.
If I am describing a person to emergency responders, law enforcement, or medical professionals, my primary concern is not whether everybody feels validated by the description.
My concern is that the information is accurate enough to get the person the help they need.
That doesn’t mean I dislike them.
That doesn’t mean I’m attacking them.
It means there are situations where effective communication matters more than social approval.
Then we arrive at one of the oldest labels in the collection: racism.
And before anybody starts typing furiously, let’s establish something.
Prejudice exists.
Discrimination exists.
Hatred exists.
Human beings have been finding reasons to dislike one another for as long as we’ve been recording history.
What interests me is how quickly the accusation itself sometimes becomes the entire argument.
A discussion starts.
Someone disagrees.
A difficult question gets asked.
And suddenly we’re no longer talking about the subject.
We’re talking about the character of the person asking the question.
Now we’re discussing motives.
Now we’re discussing assumptions.
Now we’re discussing categories.
And the original topic quietly leaves through the back door.
The reality is that human beings are remarkably similar to one another.
Different cultures.
Different backgrounds.
Different traditions.
Different experiences.
Same species.
Yet somehow we remain fascinated with finding ways to divide ourselves into categories and then acting surprised when those categories don’t fully explain the people inside them.
The lesson isn’t that prejudice doesn’t exist.
The lesson is that labels should describe behavior, not replace analysis.
And right alongside racism sits another favorite modern accusation: fascism.
Now here’s where things get interesting.
Because much like racism, fascism started as a word with a very specific meaning.
Today it often gets used to mean “someone I strongly disagree with.”
That’s a problem.
Not because authoritarian behavior doesn’t exist.
History gives us plenty of examples of that.
The problem is that once every disagreement becomes fascism, the word starts losing its usefulness.
Authoritarian behavior can come from many directions.
Sometimes it wears a uniform.
Sometimes it wears a business suit.
Sometimes it wraps itself in a cause people believe is unquestionably righteous.
Power has always been adaptable.
And jackboot thuggery doesn’t always arrive wearing jackboots.
Sometimes it shows up smiling.
Sometimes it shows up wrapped in slogans.
Sometimes it shows up supported by institutions, corporations, governments, activists, or groups that genuinely believe they’re doing the right thing.
That’s why labels are dangerous when they replace analysis.
If something is authoritarian, explain why.
If a government is overreaching, explain how.
If a corporation is exerting influence, demonstrate it.
But if the argument begins and ends with calling somebody a fascist, then the label has replaced the explanation.
And we’re back to the same problem again.
Maybe that’s the real lesson hidden underneath all of this.
Whether the label is mansplaining, science denier, racist, fascist, conspiracy theorist, extremist, privileged, bigot, misogynist, or any of the countless others that get thrown around every day, the pattern is remarkably similar.
A label is created to describe something.
The label becomes useful.
The label becomes popular.
The label expands beyond its original purpose.
And eventually the label starts replacing the conversation it was supposed to support.
At that point, language stops clarifying.
It starts obscuring.
It stops helping people communicate.
It starts helping people categorize.
And perhaps that’s why George Carlin spent so much time talking about language.
Not because words are unimportant.
Because words are incredibly important.
Words reveal how people think.
Words reveal what people value.
Words reveal what people fear.
And sometimes the words people choose to dismiss one another reveal more than the arguments they are trying to avoid.
Now before somebody inevitably says that George Carlin would never have said any of this in exactly this fashion, let me agree with them.
Of course he wouldn’t.
George Carlin already had the advantage of being George Carlin.
This article isn’t an attempt to speak for him.
It’s an attempt to examine language in a way inspired by someone who spent decades examining language himself.
And to be completely transparent, even the AI helping edit this article occasionally disagreed with where I was going.
It kept trying to steer things toward what it considered a more balanced or conventional interpretation.
That’s not a criticism.
That’s exactly what it was designed to do.
The responsibility for the conclusions in this article remains mine.
These are my observations.
These are my conclusions.
And if you disagree with them, that’s perfectly fine.
Just don’t replace the conversation with a label.