I agree that emptying language of meaning will compromise the ability to think. In my opinion, that’s part of what’s going on with the nonsense discourse that has come to characterize so much of American society. But there’s more to it than that. A brainwashed teenager claiming to be a man when she’s a woman is one thing; a Swamp creature, such as the director of a federal agency or a representative in Congress, is a different matter (excepting some actual intellectual and emotional teenagers who’ve been elected or appointed – AOC being a prime example).
The judge who testifies that she can’t, or won’t, define a woman knows darn good and well what a woman is; the judge is just playing a role to signal she’s part of the establishment Left. The DHS guy who doesn’t define the thing he wants to ban isn’t a case of someone who’s unable to give a definition, but of someone who’s unwilling to do so. The unwillingness is deliberate, since it leaves the door open to including anything he might like in the definition of the term, once it’s put into law.
So there are two very different things going on: true intellectual and linguistic vacuity on the one hand, dishonesty on the other. Neither is particularly encouraging!