I used to be a passionate NPR listener, tuning in whenever I got into the car.  By the early 2000s, as it became more openly anti-Israel, I went looking for other things.  I found Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Prager, and all the others who develop ideas and allow political opponents to challenge them.  Won over by open and intelligent discourse, I abandoned forever the carefully packaged NPR indoctrination my taxpayer dollars helped support.

Still, it's occasionally helpful to tune in to NPR to get a sense of what the college-educated, leftist half of the country thinks matters — and one of those things is to use language to destroy clarity and, by that means, organized society.

The Sunday article that caught my eye sounded non-partisan enough: "The pandemic pushed people to reevaluate their jobs.  Meet 5 who reinvented themselves."  I know of people who used the opportunity the lockdowns offered to end dead-end jobs and enter careers that inspired their passion, so it seemed like a worthwhile read.

Here are the headings NPR assigned to the five people profiled:

• "A Broadway performer finds her voice as a software engineer"
• "A stay-at-home mom felt trapped, now she's a hospital chaplain"
• "A period of reflection led to the end of a marriage, a career pivot and a new wardrobe"
• "An actor flipped the script to become a bilingual theater teacher"
• "She used to feel guilty about balancing motherhood and work — not anymore"

Take a look, though, at the header to the article, and tell me if any of the people pictured stands out:

If you picked the bearded lady, you win the prize.  Thanks to the bearded lady's pronouns, which the NPR writer slavishly honors, that gal's story turns out to be everyone's story, because of all the theys, thems, and theirs thrown in where a traditional personal pronoun (she, her, and hers) would work.  Here's just the beginning, which is a mangled mass of words that relate to nothing:

When the pandemic hit, Jack Elliott started rethinking the relationships in their life — starting with their marriage.

"We realized not too long into the pandemic that our marriage had an expiration date," they say. "And by November of 2020 we had decided that it was best for us to have an amicable split."

That probably wouldn't have happened so fast without the pandemic, says Elliott, who started reevaluating other relationships in their life, especially the unhealthy ones. During this time of reflection, they ended up breaking off contact with some friends as well as their mom, for whom they said their safety and happiness were never a top priority. Then came their career.

[snip]

As a nonbinary person, they had previously felt boxed into a certain public image, feeling the need to wear button-down shirts and slacks instead of clothes they felt comfortable wearing. But during the pandemic, at their new job, Elliott traded in their dress shirts for overalls.

Let's be clear: the above paragraphs are pure gibberish.  Society should not bow down to this because it destroys clarity, and clarity, as George Orwell understood, is what lies at the heart of communication and a stable society.

Confucius understood this, as well, when he advanced the concept known in English as the "rectification of names."  He believed that the most important thing a society can do is to make words — especially nouns and, by extension, the Chinese version of pronouns — correspond to reality:

A superior man, in regard to what he does not know, shows a cautious reserve. If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot. Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.

—Confucius, Analects, Book XIII, Chapter 3, verses 4–7, Analect 13.3, translated by James Legge

What we are witnessing in America is a deliberate effort to ensure that "affairs cannot be carried on to success."  That's the first step in the march to societal collapse.

Years ago, I thought I'd be polite to an "it" person who demands imaginary pronouns.  I won't be anymore.  I can't be anymore.  Our society depends on calling things, and people, by their true names.