Let's play the "Be P.C." game

In this post I want to talk a little bit about a terms that I read somewhere in Dispatches. I'm blatantly ripping off George Carlin's euphemisms bit but I still thought it was appropriate to do so seeing as how the next presentation is on the Vietnam War's euphemisms.

According to Carlin, the term shell shock originated during the First World War. His argument is that over the last 60 plus years we have transformed the word shell shock into something that sounds a little nicer. It changed into battle fatigue during world war two. As you can see battle fatigue sounds a little more professional. The word shock is missing to make it sound a little less serious and more like a medical term. To quote George Carlin, "Four syllables now. Takes a little longer to say. Doesn't seem to hurt as much. Fatigue is a nicer word than shock."

Then in the 50s, during the Korean War, battle fatigue was changed to "operational exhaustion". The powers that be made the word even longer and less human. Operational exhaustion sounds like what happens when your rifle breaks due to overuse. It's less human, and more "sterile".

Then came the Vietnam War and the term changed again to "post-traumatic stress disorder". And I end this paragraph quoting Carlin yet again because I can't think of anything else on my own. "...thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it's no surprise that the very same condition was called post-traumatic stress disorder. Still eight syllables, but we've added a hyphen! And the pain is completely buried under jargon."

I think it’s interesting how society changes words and phrases to make them sound a little nicer. Cleaning them up removes the power of the thing, such as shell shock or operational exhaustion or whatever you want to call it. Pretty soon we are going to be calling it post-combat-post-return-premature abnormal psyche condition.