> a bleeding heart ... who expresses, for example, sympathy with poor people or mentally-ill people. To someone without those sympathies, it will sound like the person is faking that emotion, .. since the person on the right doesn't share that emotion.

You've essentially redefined that word/phrase to imply that anyone using it is unsympathetic, which is very convenient to anyone who finds themselves accused of being one. It reminds me of definitions of SJW at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice_warrior - the first two seems accurate, then the last one is:

> Allegra Ringo in Vice writes that "in other words, SJWs don't hold strong principles, but they pretend to. The problem is, that's not a real category of people. It's simply a way to dismiss anyone who brings up social justice."

Allegra essentially redefines SJW as meaningless, by claiming that such people don't actually exist - that the phrase is purely a dismissal of Social Justice. Problem is, people who use the term don't believe that, and while it can be used, disingenuously, or erroneously to dismiss Social-Justice, the unproven claim it makes about a person is what defines its formal meaning, and not whether that claim is accurate or not. As such, you can't say "this claim is never true, therefore this term means something different" - atheists still understand what "heaven" means, even if they don't believe it exists - this is how meaning and usage differ, even though there is a complicated relationship between the two.

Now consider that "such people don't actually exist" is a claim or belief, well use of the phrase "SJW" implies the exact opposite, it requires they exist to be meaningful (well, not really, you can still talk about angels and unicorns abstractly, but in this case we are applying it as a label to a real person) so redefining the word is as unnecessary as an atheist redefining "god" - they can still talk about the term, but instead simply switch to the crux of the conversation: that they don't believe in the basis of the phrase.

So by all means, ask for evidence a person accused of virtue signalling is being disingenuous, but don't gaslight phrase itself.

As for the aspect of tone e.g. calling someone a "whiner" etc. It think in that case the insult "whine" comes from the fact that words like "complain" exist, meaning the accuser purposefully chose a more insulting word to use i.e. tone
Perhaps there are less insulting phrases than "virtue signal" e.g. "disingenuous", but I'm not sure. I can't think of an equivalent to "SJW" (I think there should be one, it's becoming as meaningless as "racist"), but I think there is a greater context to consider; there are terms that are partisan, SJW has a right bias, "mansplain" has a left bias (and isn't obviously any different from "arrogant", except with the gendered implication that it applies to men). It seems to me impossible or unfair to police tone without doing it in a bipartisan way, but anyone trying to do so usually leans one way or the other, hence "tone-policing" usually ends up as "tone-of-other-policing".

I think before we get to that stage we need to agree on what level we are discussing at, and what phrases, on both sides, are not useful to that level. And one thing is clear; public politics operates at a level way lower than we might want.

I'd also mention, as a tangent, Trump lowered the tone of public political discourse, but it wasn't great before - if anything he disabused some of the notion that it ever was; I'd argue that he was the first politician to drop the pretence of high-quality public discourse unashamedly cheat and lie. But Trump didn't break anything, he just advanced things to their inevitable conclusion; It was divisive politics that put him in the WH in the first place, no surprise he now promotes it - removing Trump will slow the advance of divisive politics, but it won't stop growing, or even accelerating. In fact, it may be more accurate to describe Trump as phenomena resulting from high division in society, rather than as a cause of division - as such removing Trump without reducing division, or causes of division, will just be an exercise in waiting for the next Trump.