Want To Hide Bad Behavior? Just Come Up With A Robotic-Sounding Euphemism

Governments, corporations, schools, religious leaders and basically everyone who likes to pretend they didn't do something awful, use distancing euphemisms for bad behavior to make it sound not so bad. I love tracking these, it's amazing how malleable language can be.

Rape Culture has become a term to describe prolific instances of rape and sexual assault in the U.S. and how easy it is to get away with and how difficult it is for victims because it's somehow their fault. Rape culture is a term so broad and so unpinnable to individual behavior as to seem like something to collectively blame on Media. Nope, TMZ and CNN aren't raping that high school girl, folks. We live in a really sexist culture where women are to blame almost as often as men. These crimes against women are taking place in a very skewed and biased legal system. Very few countries can boast anything better.

Drone Strike is a euphemism for assassination. Lindsay Graham let it slip that approximately 4,700 people have been killed via drone strikes. The government estimates that 20% may have been innocent. If they estimate it really low like that, and use percentages instead of real numbers, we, the public, won't put 2 and 2 together to see that a minimum of 900 or so people were "accidentally" assassinated by a drone. Not really accidentally, so much as carelessly, but calling it a drone strike doesn't sound murderous - it sounds cool, futuristic, and a way to keep 'Mericans safe! More people have been killed using drone strikes, and more innocent people have been killed using drone strikes, even if we use low-ball government estimates, than people killed in angry male gunman shootings around the country since Columbine.

Enhanced Interrogation is a euphemism for torture. This is an incredibly secretive operation and only a handful of people know for sure what happens under that program, and to how many people. Enhanced interrogation doesn't sound too bad, does it? Reminiscent of a school principal trying to figure out who was responsible for pantsing the lunch lady. . .

Detainee is a euphemism for people. We forget what those really are, conveniently! How many "detainees" are we holding? Hmmph. Dunno.

Main Street Conservatives - one of my favorites, this actually refers to racist white people who want all of the benefits associated with living in a culturally and socially evolved first world nation as long nobody else gets them. They also don't want to pay for any of those benefits.

Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People. Bullshit. People with guns kill people. I'm ok with leaving gun laws the way they are, as long as we can get rid of people with guns because they terrify me. They could blow at any minute!

Obesity Epidemic! Epidemic? This implies we need a vaccine. It's a euphemism for everybody eats too much and got too fat to be sustainable because now we have to enlarge movie seats, car seats, bus seats and aisles. That's what happened there.

Using these distancing techniques for the way we describe things is a great strategy for avoiding responsibility. I didn't "eat all of the gelato," I "made room in the freezer for frozen green beans."