I once dated a woman with an infuriating argumentation style. She would tell me what I thought and felt. That's galling enough, but she didn't stop there; if I said what I thought and it contradicted her expectation, she would correct me. We were young, needless to say, but still: it takes sheer intellectual chutzpah to say to someone, "No, you don't think x. You think y." It wasn't her being controlling and trying to lead me somewhere, either; she was trying to forcibly shoehorn me into her stubborn view of the world. It's amusing the first couple of times, but after day in, day out of your S.O. saying she knows you better than you do, you're pushed to the brink of insanity. It soon became my hot-button, a button I retain to this day.
I think of this often when I see people lightly throw -ism (and its sister affixes, anti- and -ic) around.
That this presidential administration was too slow in responding to the hurricane is generally accepted, even by them, but it's not enough for some people. W. can't be merely incompetent and uncaring. It must be some deep-seeded evil. Racism, classism, cronyism, someism. And those who oppose the administration? Why, they're elitist, classist, unpatriotic, anti-troop, anti-business, anti-Christian, tax-lovin', terrorist-coddlin' baby murderers.
Another favorite example: "sexist" language. This is what academics now call someone using the pronoun "he" gender-neutrally, as in "When someone votes for Kerry, he is being unpatriotic." Mind you, I do not quibble with using "he or she" here; my complaint is with Mom being told that merely writing the way she was taught to write is a "sexist" act. Can't we just say "archaic?" "Gender-biased?" Why the personal attack? Why purport to know of an sinister motivation behind, of all things, a choice of pronouns?
Because ismism is power. When we purport to divine what evils occupy others' hearts, it not only controls the terms of the debate in our favor; it puts them on the defensive, in a position of having to prove a negative. Bush can't prove he's not racist any more than Kerry can prove he's not unpatriotic or Mom can prove she's not a sexist. It's a lazy, hurtful form of argumentation. It's the cheapest of the cheap shots.*
*Except for the yes-or-no question "Are you still beating your wife?" That still reigns supreme.