A lot of people are strangely not. People got really worked up when Pluto got de-planetified, and for today, I'm calling that a word because who's gonna stop me? Gina Haspel? Why does it matter to anyone how we define, "planet," or any other contested word? Note the italicization.
In certain sub-disciplines of political science, they spend a great deal of time and effort worrying about "conceptualization." On the other hand, when I teach my Research Methods course and the term, "conceptualization," comes up (as it must, by formal decree), it comes with the following line: define your terms and move on.
You see, I am a quantitative political scientist, with a background in statistics, economics and game theory. I don't really care what you call your variable. Call it X, call it Y, call it, "Shirley," I don't care. Just define your terms so that I will know what you mean when you write.
There is such a thing as being a jackass about this. If you define "up" as down, or define "keyboard" as coffee, or define "fake news" as any news story you don't like, you are being a jackass. However, there are plenty of contested terms in political science. What is "democracy?" What is a "revolution?" Some people in my profession spend far too much of their time arguing about this. My response? Define your terms and move on. If these terms are contested, then just pick one and get on with your life, or at least, don't bother me with this shit.
An ever-increasing number of years ago, I was sitting in a classroom at Berkeley, and Ray Wolfinger (a great political scientist who taught me many things, but not on this day) attempted to lead a discussion of David Truman's The Governmental Process. He just kept repeating the question, "are women an interest group?" The students very quickly came to the conclusion that it depended how you defined "interest group," but Ray kept repeating the question anyway as though it had some hidden insight, or because we hadn't gotten to the debate he wanted. He did this occasionally. Eventually, I think I might have literally banged my head on the table, and I detest misuse of the word, "literally."
I get really annoyed with pointless arguments about definitions. Pick up a dictionary. Such things still exist. Words have multiple definitions, which are at least subtle shadings. My hero, George Carlin, wrote his 7 words bit around the 7 words that he couldn't ever say on tv at the time because there were no accepted uses. He could never get away with "fuck" at the time. Consider, though, "dick," or, "pussy." A name, or a cat? Context. That's why they didn't make his list. So, despite the fact that the word, "pussy," makes people cringe more than the word, "tits," that latter word made Carlin's original list. Why? Context. There wasn't a context in which it could have been used on tv at the time. Language. Context and meaning.
Our political debates, though, often wind up mired in "what is the meaning of X?" The gay marriage debate got bogged down in that, wrongly. Define, "marriage." Wrong! Opponents of gay marriage posed the issue as a question of "the definition of marriage," singular, as though there is one definition. By allowing gay marriage, my marriage is "redefined." Bullshit because there was never a single definition of "marriage" in the first place. Why was this done? It was the only way to pretend that letting gay couples get married imposes anything on anyone else.
We currently have another political definition game happening over transgender rights. What does it mean to be male or female? Sex versus gender, and all that. That is actually a separate question from the bathroom access question, but note how the policy question has been confused with a definition question. One is important. The other isn't.
Oh, right, though. Gina Haspel. I was getting to her. Waterboarding. Is it, "torture?" Obviously, that depends on how you define, "torture." Can you redefine torture in order to make waterboarding, "not torture?" George W. Bush's lawyers did! Why? Because George W. Bush hired them to torture the English language into doing exactly that!
Is this different from redefining Pluto, marriage, sex/gender, or any of that? Yes, because "torture" is a crime. If you redefine everything Haspel did and covered up in order to exclude them from the category of "crime" so as to exonerate her from criminal action, then you are doing something more than redefining "planet" for scholarly purposes, and doing something more than selecting among accepted definitions.
First, the purpose was not scholarly. The whole Pluto thing was driven by the weirdness of Pluto itself. Its orbit crosses over Neptune's, there's... crud around it, it is off the plane around which the other planets orbit... Pluto is just weird. How the fuck did we come to call that a "planet," and how do we get a consistent definition? It was a quest for a consistent definition. The people who were bothered by Pluto's deplanetization were just people who memorized it as a kid and can't think scientifically. Nobody started with the goal of deplanetizing Pluto and came up with the "clearing the orbital path" thing as a reverse-engineering trick.
That is, however, what happened with waterboarding. Certain people in the executive branch basically said, "I wanna torture, but torture is illegal. Give me a statement that says X is not torture so that I can do it." SERE training exposed soldiers going into risky situations to waterboarding because states like North Korea do it to extract false confessions for propaganda purposes. The administration's bullshit legal statements concluded that it can't be torture if we do it to our own soldiers in SERE training, ignoring its voluntary nature and very brief exposure, not to mention the fact that the whole point of including it in SERE training is that it is torture used by states like North Korea. Oh, and we've prosecuted other states for doing it, as a war crime.
Next, selecting among accepted definitions is different from creating a new and clearly bullshit definition. Scholars play around with existing definitions. Too much, for my tastes. Writing a new definition for the purposes of a carve-out, though? That's not what even the worst excesses of sloppy scholarship would allow.
I hate arguing about the definitions of words. We are, once again, arguing about the definition of "torture." Please, make it stop.
I guarantee you, 100%, that if any "high value detainees" are captured, Trump will order them tortured, Gina Haspel will gladly do it because she's a fuckin' liar (never trust a spook), and there will be no checks whatsoever. I don't give a flying fuck whether you call it "torture" or not. It'll be illegal under US and international law, and nobody will be held accountable.
Definitional arguments are stupid.
And here's some bonus music for the day. Frank Zappa, "The Torture Never Stops," from Zoot Allures.