[jerf]

All language can be weaponized, indeed. However, Postmodernism did add an effective tool to the arsenal, which is to insist that you get to redefine the terms your opponent is using to suit your whims, and (watch the "and" here, it's important) it smeared a patina of academic correctness over that process. (Yes, it has happened since time immemorial, I'm sure, but the intellectual traditions of the past several centuries would at least have rejected it.) Intellectuals now considered this not only legitimate, but a desirable method of argument. They put fancy terms around this process like "deconstruction", but "redefinition" is really at the core. And some really sophisticated "redefinition" it is, to, as befits "intellectuals", that includes the ability not only to redefine the things your opponent said, but also to redefine the things they didn't say.

Nobody's argument can survive a "deconstruction". I don't just mean, nobody can convince anyone in the presence of deconstruction, I mean, the argument itself can not survive.