When I see something like "a referendum to overturn a law repealing a ban on X" and get confused, one thing I do is count the negations. In my example there are three, so people who support the referendum are against X and vice versa. Even if there are nuances that simple negation-counting misses (like "always fails to verb" vs. "doesn't always verb successfully", which both have one), that gives me a basic framework that then lets me add the nuances back in without getting confused.
[I'd put this in an open thread, but those don’t seem to happen these days, and while this is a quote it isn't a Rationality Quote.]
— Geoffrey K. Pullum, Language Log, “Never fails: semantic over-achievers”, December 1, 2011
This seems like it might lead to something interesting to say about the design of minds and the usefulness of generalization/abstraction, or perhaps just a good sound bite.