Existential, Existentialism, and Existentialists

I was glad the other day to see Willy OAM Bleeding Dry – Internal Calls For Ukrainian Concessions | Kursk – New Attacks & Evac | Map Update (youtube.com) land on the empty public use of the word ‘existential.’ Seems frivolous, cavalier, loose, cynical, disingenuous, or something. Right? Maybe someone needs to do a complete etymology of the word as it is used within that community of beings steeped both in progressive art and literature as well as in PoliSci. Small community? Rare taste? Nah, it’s almost all of them. Chat GPT tells me that existentialism can revolve “around the exploration of human existence, individual freedom, and the meaning (or lack thereof) of life.” Could it be that ‘existential’ doesn’t click in their minds to designate something as a real threat to the existence of something else; or is it that it only means something is central to their own struggle for meaning? Too out there, too weird? Still nah. ‘Existential’ appears in eurostratspeech ^© when it helps a few elite Euros with their need to put a little meaning into their lives. Political existentialism can turn superficial things profound and deadly things into imperatives more important than life. Not all lives. Naturally, the most successful emitters of the word are not risking the lives of their own children with it. That would be too close to real real. Existentialist real often elevates death, especially the death of others. “Their existence, our meaning.” Is the gratuitous use of ‘existential’ somehow related to existentialism? Hell, I dunno. Pretty sure the 1991 borders of Ukraine are in no way existential to anything German. Meanwhile, Israelis use the word correctly.