zlacker

We've had things like a sitting vice president kill a secretary of the treasury (and Founding Father) in a duel, over political insults. I make two points with this. The first is that obviously the past was far from some era of restrained gentleman, but the second is that I think words used to have a lot more meaning.

And that's because in modern times we've been rapidly diluting the meaning of basically everything by endlessly resorting to inappropriate hyperbole. This makes it difficult to express things and practically impossible to express an extreme feeling without resorting to the sort of hyperbole that makes hyperbole look restrained, which is what this thread is ultimately about.

It'd be nice if we returned to the era of words having meaning, but the era of the internet probably makes that impossible.

>>somena+(OP)
Really amusing aside. This article, "Shitshow! Britain’s potty-mouthed parliament", was just published: https://www.politico.eu/article/britains-potty-mouthed-parli...

That stiff upper lip has, perhaps, become a bit more relaxed.