That's a poor excuse. They're low resolution, but not so low resolution that you can chant a slogan and then claim you meant something else entirely. Why not "reform the police", or hell, even "disarm the police"?
Do you think "disarm the police" would be going better than "defund the police"?
(I suspect it would actually be quite a bit more incendiary.)
Communication (even at length) is hard. We all bring different baggage to every attempt to speak and listen. It's probably ~impossible once you mix in uncharitable readers/listeners.
I can't speak for the campaigners, but I suspect "reform the police" won't cut the mustard for them because it's the sort of thing the establishment says before it fails to deliver meaningful change. "Today I'm calling for the establishment of a bipartisan commission on police reform", and its short imperative slogan--"reform the police"--could be an inspiring message if people had the impression that is how the gears sound when they're spinning up to change something.
But it's not very fair to insist people should be chanting a demand that seems to translate to "promise to look busy for a few months so that we'll go home and hope we don't notice when you don't solve the problem."
"Reform the police" has long been the tagline for ineffective measures. We've been trying to do it for decades; "defund the police" is in part a response to the reform argument.
"Disarm the police" would receive the exact same pearl clutching responses.
I'm not sure how either of these articles support your point.
Your first article is someone criticizing prior efforts by others to reduce public education funding. The only person using the word "defund" is the author. Though interestingly, there is a mention of conservative attacks on programs like sociology, anthropology, minority studies, and gender studies. I assure you that many conservatives really do want to abolish funding for those programs.
The second article is a single person using the word "defund" to describe Obama's reduction of military spending. Again, somebody using the word to describe somebody else's actions.
Interestingly, both of those articles are by people who oppose defunding. Perhaps they used that word precisely because it implies "remove funding entirely", which has an exaggerated emotional impact?
In any case, neither example is the same thing as a large social movement using it as a slogan, especially when that movement publishes things like "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police": https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...
When things like that appear in the New York Times, is it so unreasonable for people to take their word for it? Or should we keep insisting that they don't really mean it?
And before you tell me that that's just one person's opinion, I'll just point out that so were both of your references, and those are the opinions of people who aren't even supporters of those movements. The "defund the police" movement has its own people using the term and saying "yes, we mean literally abolish the police".
The first article also quotes someone else saying defund. Eliminating sociology, history, anthropology, and language aren't mainstream conservative positions. Minority studies and gender studies maybe.
I picked 2 old articles from different political tribes to show it isn't new or just 1 tribe. Defund the Pentagon is a slogan now. Bernie Sanders[1] and Barbara Lee[2] proposed cutting the military budget by 10% and called it defunding.
I don't see anyone saying defund can't mean abolish. But most people who mean abolish say abolish because defund can mean reduce funding.
It's unreasonable to listen to people on the fringe of a movement and ignore the majority. It's unreasonable to read NYT opinion pieces and ignore NYT news pieces.[3] It's unreasonable to ignore actual legislation. It's unreasonable to ignore all the top search results.
(I suspect it would actually be quite a bit more incendiary.)
Communication (even at length) is hard. We all bring different baggage to every attempt to speak and listen. It's probably ~impossible once you mix in uncharitable readers/listeners.
I can't speak for the campaigners, but I suspect "reform the police" won't cut the mustard for them because it's the sort of thing the establishment says before it fails to deliver meaningful change. "Today I'm calling for the establishment of a bipartisan commission on police reform", and its short imperative slogan--"reform the police"--could be an inspiring message if people had the impression that is how the gears sound when they're spinning up to change something.
But it's not very fair to insist people should be chanting a demand that seems to translate to "promise to look busy for a few months so that we'll go home and hope we don't notice when you don't solve the problem."