The argument I keep hearing: yes, calling the Department of Defense the "Department of War" is technically wrong. But there are bigger fish to fry.

I want to suggest this argument is philosophically confused. And the confusion has a name: Cartesian dualism. The 384-year-old framework that trained us to see language as signs floating above reality — not part of it.

Orwell knew better. Arendt knew better. Shannon's information theory, quantum mechanics, and neuroscience all point the same direction: words are not representations of reality. They are interventions in it.

The people telling me to pick bigger battles are operating inside a framework that makes them unable to see what Orwell and Arendt were warning about.