QUOTE : The damage done to American language is not yet nearly as profound as the century-long decimation of Russian under totalitarianism and Putinism, but the lessons of Russian journalists hold. Some words ought to be retired: “tremendous” can take a hiatus, for example. Essential words, in the debasement of which journalists have often been complicit, have to be rehabilitated before it’s too late. The word “politics,” or “political,” is an example. It ought to refer to the vital project of negotiating how we live together as a city, a state, or a country; of working across difference; of acting collectively. Instead, it is used to denote emptiness: hollow procedure, inflated rhetoric, tactical positioning are dismissed as “just politics.” But to use the word “politics,” or indeed any other word, and be believed, journalists will have to understand the words as meaningful and consequential. That, in turn, requires a reckoning not only with the damage Trumpism has inflicted on the public sphere but also with the conditions that made him so effective.