This is true except for the part where anyone smiles naively, as though the dog whistle isn't delivered in the most transparent manner imaginable

well, they've had euphemisms and dog whistles since forever, and the people who were direct with their bigotry are still direct with it. this could even be seen as a step back from outright bigotry, implying that some of these people are less comfortable expressing direct transphobia / racism / sexism with the understanding that they are in fact losing power

For fuck's sake, can this debate die already? It's one those made up words that no-one agrees on the meaning of, so people with the exact same views about the real world will fight to the death over it, because they're using completely different definitions of the word.

It used to just mean "progressive" with a positive connotation, then it got oversaturated and some progressives started using it to describe the kinds of people who fake having progressive ideals just to make themselves look good or sell shit. Then conservatives started using it to describe all progressives again, but this time with a negative connotation. Then some of those conservatives started using it to describe literally anything they don't like.

The problem is that the meaning's changed so fast that whatever meaning you're using, chances are there's someone around you who defines it differently, leading to a lot of pointless conflict that could be resolved if we just all agreed on a meaning, or stopped saying the fucking word.