Words Are Not Synonyms
Precision is the last line of defense before a word can be made to mean its opposite.
A word is a container for a specific claim about reality. Swap the container and the claim can be smuggled past anyone who isn't reading closely, which is most people, most of the time.
The euphemism treadmill
This is not a new trick. Every generation has its own euphemism treadmill: a precise, uncomfortable word gets worn down through repetition until it's soft enough to say in public, and then it gets replaced by whatever word hasn't been worn down yet. The replacement isn't chosen for accuracy. It's chosen for the friction it removes.
Watch what happens when "censorship" becomes "moderation," when "surveillance" becomes "safety," when "debt" becomes "investment," when "occupation" becomes "presence." Nothing about the underlying fact changed. Only the container did. The people doing the swapping will insist the words are synonyms. They are not synonyms. A synonym preserves the claim. These substitutions exist specifically to alter it.
The tell
The tell is always the same: the new word is vaguer than the old one, and the vagueness is not an accident of language evolving naturally. It is manufactured, usually by people with a direct interest in no one noticing the thing the old word was pointing at. Precision costs them something. Fog is free.
Why exact words matter more than clever ones
An exact word can be checked against the world and found true or false. A blurred one can only be felt, and feelings are much easier to manage than facts. Keeping one's own thinking sharp means keeping a running list of the words that used to mean one thing and have been quietly reassigned to mean something gentler. Refuse the substitution out loud. Call the thing by its original name and watch who flinches.
Sovereignty over a mind starts here, at the level of the sentence. Lose the vocabulary and the argument is lost before it starts, because the arguing happens inside a frame someone else built and mislabeled.