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Comment by MarcellusDrum | Hacker News Reader

The "Patriot Act" is so maliciously named its more funny than sad.

Reminds me of George Carlin's show about changing words to make them softer.[1]

An good example he used to show this is the condition the fighters get from shock in combat. In WW1, it was called Shell Shock, a terrifying name. The same condition in WW1 was called Battle Fatigue, a nicer name. In the Korean War, the name changed to Operational Exhaustion, removing any humanity from it. After the Vietnam War, the name because Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. When you compare the terms "Shell Shock" and "PTSD", it's obvious what the intent is.

[1]: https://youtu.be/vuEQixrBKCc

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The intent isn't to make it softer though. "PTSD" is more accurate than "shell shock". In WWI they thought that the accumulated shockwave exposure from constant shelling caused mental issues in soldiers. Today we know that all sorts of stressful situations can cause PTSD; it doesn't require being in the trenches taking howitzer fire day and night.

The point Carlin was trying to make is that the human experience is removed from a term such as "post-traumatic stress disorder". Yes, it might be more medically accurate, but fighting for the rights of people who experienced "shell shock" might have been more impactful. When your experienced is buried underneath medical terms, you bury the humanity of it.

A plausible counterpoint is that renaming can also remove a lot of the social stigma, leading to more people getting treatment. As an example, I believe many prefer using the term "post-traumatic stress/PTS" now because it removes the "disorder" stigma. I.e., it better communicates that it's a natural reaction to such stress and nothing to be ashamed of

[1]https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/mental-health/ptsd/relate...

You might be right that this motivates the 'euphemism treadmill', but if so I think that's misguided. It's my personal belief that the stigma follows the condition itself (particularly when untreated), not the name given to the condition. When I was a kid my friends and I all knew that you had to step light around some people's fathers because they were Vietnam vets with hair triggers that would go ballistic for seemingly little reason. In retrospect these men obviously had PTSD, though as kids we knew it as 'He's an asshole because Nam fucked him up.'

To be clear, I don't think the nomenclature is the sole driver of social stigma, just a contributor.

As an analogy, I doubt anybody thinks the social stigma around trisomy-21 is solely attributable to previous politically incorrect terminology but continued use of those former terms doesn't help alleviate that stigma.

I am amazed how civil and illuminating this particular discussion thread is. Thank you all!

That's a good point, and your PTS sans-D reference exemplified it well IMO. I think at this point it would be justified to label every one of us with PTSD, after suriving the pandemic so far, and I for one would prefer just post-trauamtic stress, instead of tagging myself with a "disorder" as if I had done something wrong.

Shell Shock isn't a better description of the problem than Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; the problem is that not enough people care to make this a priority.

Not everyone who gets fucked up got fucked up due to being shocked with shells. Your mom didn't get shocked with shells; she got shocked with your dad's fists (maybe even after he got Shell Shock).

Bad things happen to people, and sometimes they cause lasting trauma. The direct cause might be different but the effect is similar enough that the words used to name it should change.

I don’t think your comment has any kind of negative intent, but I feel like the idea that grouping any consequence of civilian experience with those of military combat certainly cannot be a reasonable association.

I don’t think Carlin’s point was so much to comment on the accuracy of the description, but rather to say that these descriptions have become longer and longer as time has advanced and thereby lessons the guttural impact they “used” to command.

Do you think that’s fair?

> I don’t think your comment has any kind of negative intent, but I feel like the idea that grouping any consequence of civilian experience with those of military combat certainly cannot be a reasonable association.

... even if we've since established that said consequences exist along the same cognitive spectrum? From the perspective of a clinician (whose use of the term PTSD is scientifically driven), does it matter whether the conditions that caused the disorder were military or civilian?

It moves the blame to the victim.

Actually we're getting increasing evidence that there are two different disorders/diseases here.

1. is the low grade TBI(traumatic brain injury) that is fairly called "Shell shock" 2. is the psychological weight of traumatic experiences

The evidence is pretty strong that part of why soldiers PTSD is so hard to treat(not that PTSD is easy to treat in general) is that their neurons have been damaged so it's literally more difficult for them to learn new stress responses and make use of CBT(Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) to manage their inappropriate, for civilian life, stress responses.

It comes to my mind the names of the ministries in 1984 (Ministry of Plenty, Ministry of Love).

The Department of War became the Department of Defense.

Don't forget the Ministry of Truth.

Well "fatigue", "exhaustion" and "shock" imply you could just get over those, as medicine advanced we got a better picture of what it is, hence the more precise term now.

As for the "Patriot Act", it's funny how ironic of a name it is.

There was a predecessor name to Shellshock of "Soldier's Heart" back in the American Civil war. In such a brother against brother civil war it wouldn't have been judged shameful but with later militarism could have implied "weakness" against the propaganda dehumanized foreign menance. Assuring memory held to WWI and it wasn't an independent rediscovery/reinvention "shell shock" dodged the character image driven denial of having it or its existance by implying more physical damage as even valiant brave men are not immune to bullets and explosions. Men were facing charges of cowardice after fleeing vast trauma and it eased accepting "the man who fled after a many months long bloody stalemate isn't a craven but bearing invisible injuries sustained for his country so executing him would be a terrible wrong". Thus ironically shell shock could be called an ego saving euphemism itself.

And well authoritarians have no sense of irony - what they think is "ironic" is presenting their true self when it unacceptable and passing it off as a joke. Thus they destroy freedom to protect freedom the same as they destroy the village to save it.

> And well authoritarians have no sense of irony - what they think is "ironic" is presenting their true self when it unacceptable and passing it off as a joke.

(squints) I think you've actually uncovered a true case of irony here. How would you know that the dictator considers their propoganda ironic? The fact that people read it and still laugh it off is the true irony.

> The "Patriot Act" is so maliciously named its more funny than sad.

> Reminds me of George Carlin's show about changing words to make them softer.[1]

“Patriot” isn’t exactly a soft word, though? I never understood why this brand of nationalism is so completely embraced and unquestioned in every fraction of the American political spectrum. It’s not like nationalism is unproblematic.

Government obfuscation by nomenclature is a useful and reliable tell.

Could one use NLP/ML to score a metric on the distance between the phrase and the concept? I think it needs some historical context as well.

Like when "School of the Americas" got renamed to, "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation" which are both names for sniping civilians and throwing people out of helicopters.

I could see _eating a copper banana_ as a euphemism for assassinating a south american labor leader.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_f...

Perhaps we should first try to teach the difference to more people, before we try to teach it to an AI.

... Battle Fatigue!

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