Impeachment - A synecdoche of the people

There are words that have strayed far beyond their origin with no harm to anyone but linguistic snobs.  (as the word synedoche)  When one reads about the decimation of a town, we all know it means absolute destruction and not the original Roman practice of killing one person out of ten for punishment.  In contrast, when there is a groundswell to impeach a judge or a President, there is no doubt of the meaning, whether it's a tweet or the headline in a national newspaper. 

It does not refer to the preliminary vote that was given this term in our Constitution to mean an indictment by a simple majority of the members of the House of Representatives.  Whether it was the outpouring of "Impeach Earl Warren" posters after the Supreme Court decision to end segregation, or today's targeting President Trump, the word means more than to go through the constitutionally defined procedures that remove a government official from office.

Unlike other countries, our dictionaries are descriptive rather than prescriptive.  So, American English is inherently fluid, as words not only objectively define the subject but the speaker tone.  Any decent computer program could find enough words that identifies a person's political loyalty, which unfortunately short circuits substantive discussion.  With the word "impeach" distorted by both political parties about equally, replacing it need not be drowned out by partisanship.  Whether the cry is to "Impeach Obama" or "Impeach Trump" that's not what those who are join in the chorus literally mean --- unless the rare times when it does. 

When the Republicans were deciding whether to impeach President Clinton for perjury, they were using the constitutional meaning, knowing there was no chance that they could get the two thirds majority in the Senate to actually remove him.  The thinking was based on the confused aura of the word held by the public so that,  "Democratic President William J. Clinton Impeached" would forever taint his presidency.  They were wrong.  As his approval rating was among the highest of retiring presidents.

The continued misuse and misreading of this term is both a reflection and a perpetuation of the low level of understanding of our government by the general public.   It implies that the outcome of a general election is subject to continued support for an official during the term of office, and does not acknowledge that the word itself only means passage of the initial, and easiest of a two part process.  If the word was replaced by "remove" the office holder, it could be a veiled threat of violence or to use of the elective process, neither of which capture the "throw the bum out vehemence;  or an appreciation of how our constitution is structured to balance the authority of an elected official with the emotions of the electorate.

Of course It's the conflation of the two processes that makes the word so popular. It sounds both official and angry.  Those leaders who thus distort language may lose the linquaphile vote, but who cares.   Remember, candidate Trump absurdly accused his Democratic opponent and the President of being "founders of the Islamic State"   When one of  his supporters tried to give him an out with, "you mean they provided conditions for their growth" he said, "No, I said they founded it and that's what I mean." 

Trump won his race to the bottom, not by the precision of his language, but his bold wielding of words into primitive utterances that united his voters in visceral hatred of the enemy.  In doing so he may have changed the practice of politics in this country and the world. 

And damn it that's why I want to see the guy impeached.  And I stand by that.

How impeachment (of Clinton) became inevitable