The language gap

One worrying sign of the sharpening polarization in America is the increasing inability of the Blue Church to communicate with the rest of the country. Not only do the bizarre ideological fixations of the Left appear to the majority of Americans to be increasingly unhinged and divorced from reality, but the very vocabulary of the Left -- the actual words Leftist use -- bear an ever-more-tenuous connection to normal English.

I just came across an example of this in a New Yorker article on Linus Torvalds, the irascible creator of Linux, who decided to step down temporarily after the magazine confronted him about complaints that his "abusive behavior" had discouraged women from working as Linux programmers. The article finds no evidence that Torvalds' notorious rudeness was directed specifically at female programmers, or was intended to discourage women as a category from contributing to Linux.

In any case, the article describes the efforts of Sage Sharp, "a prominent Linux contributor," to influence Torvald's behavior and impose a Code of Conduct on the project. I was struck by this sentence:

In 2013, Sharp, who is nonbinary and uses “they/them” pronouns, confronted Torvalds on his home turf—the public Linux kernel mailing list.

Now, I have come across the term "nonbinary" before, and I imagine most regular readers of the New Yorker have as well. They are, I assume, steeped in the vernacular of social justice. A majority of Americans, however -- perhaps a large majority -- when confronted with the matter-of-fact assertion that some individual is "nonbinary" and uses the pronouns "they" and "them" to describe xirself, would have absolutely no idea what the fuck that means.

Other examples abound, of words that are pregnant with meaning to Leftist elites but meaningless, incomprehensible or totally misunderstood by the rest of America. "Cisgender." "Privilege." "Being an ally." "Intersectionality." "Safe space." Insane concepts denoted by fake words or made-up uses of normal words. They infest the discourse of the modern Left, these alien locutions as indecipherable to the average American as a Sanskrit mantra.

It bodes ill for our republic that important segments of the elite no longer speak to the rest of us, but have retreated into a make-believe world, speaking an arcane court language that nobody else understands.

Good luck with that

There is a certain type of ideologue that believes it is both possible and desirable to completely ban civilian ownership of guns in America. It is useful to bear in mind that what these people are calling for, is the confiscation of 40% of the world's firearms:

American citizens now own 40 per cent of all guns in the world - more than the next 25 top-ranked gun ownership countries combined - with the number only set to grow, according to new research.

According to a decade-long survey released by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, not only do Americans own the highest number of guns per capita, but also between 2006 and 2017, US gun owners acquired some 122 million new guns. That represented more than half of the 207 million new civilian-owned firearms around the world during that time.

“The biggest force pushing up gun ownership around the world is civilian ownership in the United States,” said Aaron Karp, one of the authors of the report.

And here's another take on the data courtesy of Stephen Gutowski:

I don't think people really understand how many guns American civilians own. The Small Arms Survey was just updated this week and found there are about 400 million civilian-owned guns in the US.
April Sets Gun Sales Record
April 2018 saw the most gun-related checks run through the Federal Bureau of Investigation's background check system.
http://freebeacon.com/issues/april-sets-gun-sales-record/
This, of course, makes is by far the #1 in civilian gun ownership in the world with the next closest being India at about 70 million. There are more civilian-owned guns in the US than their are people Most people, I think, understand that but don't really grasp what it means.
Every law enforcement agency in America combined have about 1 million firearms in their inventory. That means American civilians have about 400 TIMES as many firearms as American police.
In May alone, American civilians bought somewhere around 2 million firearms. That's twice as many firearms as every police department in America combined IN A SINGLE MONTH.
Similarly, the American military is estimated to hold about 4.5 million firearms. That means American civilians have 100 TIMES as many firearms as every branch of the American military COMBINED.
If you combine May and April's gun-related background check numbers you get 4.7 million. That means the American public bought more guns IN JUST THE LAST TWO MONTHS than the entire American military has on hand.
Furthermore, the Small Arms Survey estimates all the world's law enforcement agencies combined hold about 22.7 million guns. In 2017 alone, the FBI processed 25.2 million gun checks. The American public bought more guns in 2017 than every police agency in the world combined.
Between 2012 and 2017, the FBI did more than 135 million civilian gun checks. That's more than the estimated 133 million guns held by ALL THE WORLD'S MILITARIES COMBINED.
Over the last 5 years, the American public purchased more guns than every military force on the planet combined.
I hope that gives everyone some more insight into American gun ownership. For more details on this please read my piece:
Report: Nearly 400 Million Civilian-Owned Guns in America
A report published this month found civilians in the United States own almost 400 million guns, outpacing every other population, police, or military force.
http://freebeacon.com/culture/report-nearly-400-million-civilian-own