Your command of language is IMO (that's the Three Letter Acronym, er "TLA" for In My Opinion; IMhO - adds 'humble' - though usually that addition is in jest.. except for the Truly Self-Righteous, of course ;-)
It is certainly "more than adequate", evidencing that your hours spent in the halls of Academe were not wasted. All-in-all, an appreciation? Love for Language - I deem more admirable than most other qualities - as all possibilities for communication derive from That. Those perpetually sloppy with language and content to remain there - are not merely cuthless (uncouth, then) but will find that, at every turn: various doors will close to their aspirations.
Unfortunately, and an important corollary: it is Vital to become acquainted with the vagaries of political-lying "speech", not merely in self-defense - but for the benefit of all one's intimates.
To be unaware of being manipulated in a Pavlovian sense (look up Ivan Pavlov sometime, for a quick idea) by popular doggerel-phrases of the day: is to be forever a victim and never an actor in the great play of words and ideas -- which govern all the outer-Rulez of your habitation in these parts.
There is a book I've found both illuminating and fun re the mentioned 'vagaries' of politico-babble. Was actually written for children to read (with help from a handy young relative). Its basics, as came to be called semantics - were stolen by a Microsoft-kinda entrepreneur named S.I. Hayakawa. He essentially rephrased a few paragraphs and called it IIRC (if I remember correctly) "Language in Thought and Action". Then got himself elected to an academic sinecure.. (At SF State, actually)
Written by one Stuart Chase in ~1935, The Tyranny of Words. It saves lots of theoretical 'language' mumbo-jumbo as it is written in Plainest English. Available in most libraries - maybe even reprints by now (?) In that, Mr. Chase introduces the idea of substituting the word blab within every speech - for Those Words which, for being Universal Symbols - have become unuseable for communicating anything of what the wielder might imagine that another 'hears'.. Words, phrases like:
The Murican Peepul think ___, demand ___ ("American People" - as if.. there WERE some unified, homogenized THING which all or most "think"! On any subject imaginable!!)
also (partial list, natch)
Freedom! Liberty! Motherhood! Truth! Nation-under-God, God Is On Our Side
yada & yada
Left! Right! Commie Librul! 'Compassionate' Conservative! (forcing one to look up, say - what then is a 'Reactionary'? and also - how does the phrase liberal education square with the usage of 'liberal' as an epithet [nasty word] ??) And what does the word illiberal connote? Finally - what is the root of the word 'Radical'? [yes, this is indeed a pun - but a most Useful one to realize]
In brief - such doggerel is Everywhere; and then you get into.. not so much "religion" as say, religio-bigotry; the substitution of one's own opinions, or the hearsay of various Dead Scribes - attributing these evidently-human opinions to: The One God! (meaning Yours, natch - screw anyone Else's 'God' or alternate Cosmic View of it all).
And so it goes..
(You might substitute almost anything Kurt Vonnegut ever wrote: for that "Star Trek" book you mentioned was weighing down your reading list - a mere suggestion. We'll get to, Small Gods by Terry Pratchett - a little later.)
So then.. you see, you cannot actually escape the politics thing except by choosing naivete as a cop-out to all the hard work of de-babelizing such crap as FOX-'News' and, most every political speech ever uttered.
Sorry, but them's the breaks; homo-sap has been described as the lying animal.
[Don't Believe Anything I Say]
Ashton