Language, and attempts to assert control over its use and definitions, is not at all inconsequential

Whether a birth certificate for a same-sex couple in the IVF case mentions "mother" or the less ambiguous "inseminated person" is indeed fully inconsequential for the vast majority of the American public.

Doesn't stop populists from wipping up outrage.

Changes in official government paperwork to be more inclusive are very much not "control of language and attempts to assert control over its use and definitions".

Calm down with the rhetorical fallacies...

I mean, you could describe the Trump administration's executive order requiring government agencies to stop using Gulf of Mexico and instead use Gulf of America as simply "changes in government paperwork." But I think it's obviously also an attempt to change the language.

It's not just some govt. form. It's literally about using it as a reason to ban the world's largest news agency from govt. press briefings.

I wouldn't classify it as "changes in government paperwork" since the EO defined the official name for a geographical feature, very different from some law changing the usage of a term in a government's form. Quite a different level and degree, if that's out of consideration everything can be reduced to some more general form to be played as equivalent.

I also DGAF about the renaming of the gulf of mexico relative to essentially any of the other, much more consequential actions the administration is taking.

It’s pure theater designed to distract.

My feeling is that people aren't much against something inconsequential per se, instead they are against something that's out of their status quo and that question some underlying values they haven't ever questioned themselves (for example: genders).

Instead of being curious why exactly some people are proposing something that challenges their worldview they instead immediately allow their fear to take over, and reject the change.

It's the same pattern that non-accepting parents of gay children tend to go through when their kid comes out of the closet; in that case a lot of them have a change of heart into acceptance because they love the person, over time they are able to overcome the fear and understand a new worldview.

Not so much for the masses with flames being fanned by politicians wanting to capitalise on that fear, they are kept in fear, they are told to reject any attempt to educate them, the messaging calls it "evil" or "not from God" or "only for betas", adapted to the audience's most chauvinistic identity (religion, machoism, etc.).

Since it's easy to manipulate those into hating whatever is the bad-word-du-jour then those same politicians can attach any policy with "combating bad-word-du-jour" and a lot of the believers won't question it much.

It's disheartening because even though I'm quite progressive and leftist (in the European sense), I still believe that conservatism is necessary to balance out the discussion, unfortunately it's also an ideology intrinsically bound to the fear of change, a feeling very easy to be co-opted by power-hungry people.

It's an ideology that rejects rationality and almost completely embraces emotion (fear), which is rather ironic since its most fervent followers want to believe they are the most reasonable and logical ones.