It costs significant cognitive load, to change one’s use of language, to remember that to express the same thought one must now say b instead of a. Couple it with a social taboo - people who still say ‘a’ are bad people! Literally the worst! Actual racists! - and it’s not really a surprise that there is pushback.
It really doesn't. The human brain is very adept at accepting renames for concepts and we are so accustomed to alternative references to the same thing that we take physical pleasure from wordplay and give nicknames to our favorite things.
It takes only a few tries to start learning a new name or reference to something for normal people.
Hell, give it a try! Take a completely meaningless or harmless term in your life and attempt to use a different word for it. Hell, there is a wonderful children's book about doing this called "Frindle".
I would go so far as to argue being able to liberally and arbitrarily adjust how we reference things is one of the key powers that makes language work, and one of the main ways it enhances our ability to work with concepts and logical systems. Language DOES affect the way we think.
If using a different word for something really does cause you significant cognitive load, consider seeing a psychologist because there might be something "abnormal" about your brain.
You know, it’s fine as well, when there’s a point to it. In this case we have a fairly well written article giving some interesting context around cargo cults, but certainly nothing that contradicts the central idea around the metaphor, and no injured parties AFAICT. So that’s a no.
