How the Meaning of Words is misused by Politicians, and Why You should be angry about it

The one thing in American politics that aggravates me more than anything else is the flagrant, widespread misuse of words. That, and why that misuse occurs. Let's look specifically at the word "Nazi", which is flung around by members of Congress on a far-too-frequent basis to describe one another or one another's party.
What does "Nazi" mean, by the way, specifically or by association? The Nazis committed genocide, which for those who don't know means the complete extermination of an entire race (or at least the specific desire, and action to achieve that desire, to do so). That isn't "being racist" -- it's far, far worse, it's putting to action the specific, coordinated effort to utterly exterminate, to murder, every single member of a racial group for no other reason than a sense of racial superiority (where the actors are of the "superior" race and those exterminated are of the "inferior" race). Choosing not to sit on a bus beside someone who has chartreuse-colored-skin because of that skin color is racist; what the Nazis did, and therefore are, is far, far worse. The Nazis advocated the right to "living space" (Lebensraum) for the "superior Germanic people", which in turn translated into wars designed solely to force other people off their lands and give the Nazis more actual land for their own use. Being a Nazi means embracing National Socialism as an economic/social construction, which has its own definitions. Let's leave it with these, because these few offerings are more than enough.
How many politicians in Congress advocate the specific extermination of an entire race? Or advocate invading, say, Canada, so we can force the Canadians off their lands so we can move Americans onto that land? The answer is, none. Zero. Nada. Not a Single One.
How many politicians, therefore, should be called "Nazi"? How many politicians should be tarred with association, by being called that word, to the actions that Nazis brought to the world? The answer, again, is NONE. Doesn't matter if they disagree with your philosophy, no Democrat, no Republican, is right to call the other a "Nazi" or their actions "Nazis". Doing so is beneath contempt and should be actively and angrily condemned by every other politician and every American out there.
But, of course, that brings us to the fact that the use of the word continues to the present day. Why? Because there is no uproar, no condemnation, no actions on the part of the electorate to punish the disgraceful individual who did so. And that is the greatest tragedy of all. The politicians are mostly intelligent people, or at least they put themselves forward as smart and wise people. If they are indeed as smart and wise, or just 1/2 as smart and wise, as they claim, and I think they are, then they know what the word means, literally and by association. So why would they choose -- this is key, the act of choosing -- to deliberately misuse the word? They know the public will hear "my Republican colleague is a Nazi because he wants to redo the arcane methodology we use to calculate student lunches" and just associate "Nazi = Bad". Think about that, because there is an outrage lurking behind that reasoning: that the public isn't smart enough, or wise enough, to understand the full implications and meaning of the word "Nazi" and will just make the childlike association "Nazi = Bad". This is the greatest insult a politician can direct at us, the electorate, the American people: that they will use words knowing full well the words aren't right or correct or even fair, solely and specifically because they know the American people are ignorant and will react based on that ignorance. And what's sadder than that? The fact that they appear to be right. There's no uproar, no anger, no Press that points these things out. In a world where college graduates can't find Iraq (or Mexico, for that matter) on a map in large majorities, where the majority of college graduates can't even put the Civil War, World War I, and World War II in chronological order, the misuse of a word is a given -- because the public really is as ignorant as the politicians who take advantage of that ignorance believe.
As an American who does think about the words people use and how they use them, as a free-thinking American who is offended that the public at large can more readily identify Michael Jordan properly than identify the significance of Otto von Bismarck, I am offended and disgusted with these politicians -- but I am equally as ashamed of the American people who continues to revel in a social culture that puts no value on learning, puts no value on thinking, and therefore allows these politicians to get away with it.

Next time, we'll look at the 1990s, and how modern feminism bankrupted itself during that decade through its own actions. Brief summary: if your actions contradict your philosophy, which is to say the ideas behind the movement, then you've bankrupted the movement and become blatant hypocrites.