“This is a different environment altogether. This landscape has changed almost to something unrecognizable in the last four years. It begs us to be cautious and accurate.”
I'm going to say this with the kindest of tone.
You will immediately lose credibility when you use broad strokes to apply societal features and broad-based opine shaped or 'dressed' as fact over a large sect, race(s) nation, creed, religion, etc.
Where standard attributes can copy themselves like code over some factions and work to 'group' people or movements together, those are usually smaller cells. So for example, QAnon, Trump Cult, Proud Boys, The New Republic. These are based on belief systems that look almost like the alignment of religion, versus socio-political organization of a more common nature. You are pretty safe to use more generalized description devices. They tell you in a unified front who they are. They align themselves to group think versus an individualized interpersonal code of ethics, which moves wholly independent of the unifying cell.
It is near impossible to successfully use adjectives to qualify X as a singular concept when speaking about massive cross sections of society. Even in religion "animism used merely as a term to show the interconnectedness of the world through its animation by personal will and power, is unobjectionable on the grounds that all religions, may be regarded as animistic."
I've been studying socio-political structures of multiple countries and world religions for a very long time. To test any idea I think I might carry or a view I have, I bounce it off an academic who is a straight-up expert in the field. I've found that the most potent and powerful devices have been propagandized speech, word of mouth and planted idealism which can take on the life of a spore when in the 'right' meaning certain environs. When I say environs, I mean BOTH progressives and alt-right among others.
Just because you may identify as a progressive (I'm with the good guys) does not at all absolve you of the destructive contributions of the above. In most cases, you just don't know enough about a massive cross-section of society to use broad based description devices. I guess a good way to check yourself is to do some reading on what some actual academics who have a solid history in that very subject have to say. I think you'll find pretty quickly, that they don't do that.
For example, I was SHOCKED when an academic I trust, course corrected me on fanaticism. What I thought was attributes of control group fanaticism with Portland politics was actually regarded as another term altogether and he explained why. I was shocked. But it made sense, I'm glad I learned from him.
We can't afford to be fucking around in ideation that can cause long-term irreversible effects. This is a different environment altogether. This landscape has changed almost to something unrecognizable in the last four years. It begs us to be cautious and accurate.
