If ever there was a cliché that I really hate—and I detest all clichés—it is the banal phrase: “new normal.” Just this past week CNN, which fancies itself as a news organization, came out with its own list of “new normals” on the economy. 1 I won’t bother you with the details of their “analysis” but they are as follows:
New Normal #1: Long-term, high unemployment.
New Normal #2: Renting an apartment instead of owning a home.
New Normal #3: Saving over spending, or in other words, not buying anything.
New Normal #4: Not taking vacations and instead staying at home.
New Normal #5: Higher taxes for the “rich.”
So according to CNN, better get used to never owning your own home, not going on vacations, not buying things, paying higher taxes and being unemployed during long stretches of your life. Oh, wait you forgot one CNN, “We’re All Socialists Now.” No wait a minute, Newsweek’s got that new normal covered.
And because these are now the new normals, we’ll all just have to accept things as they are: that this is our miserable lot in life. Yes, we’ll all just have to accept and start getting used to the “new normal” of high taxes, high unemployment, and living in a shitty, second-rate country. In other words, you will just have to accept that the American dream is dead.
Of course none of CNN’s analysis has anything to do with how a once free and great nation has been destroyed by liberal policies designed to expand government and burden individuals with the costs of living in a sinking entitlement society. No, that has nothing to do with it at all so “don’t even go there.” (Another brilliant cliché.) You see if someone can get you to accept that this is only just the way things are—the new normal—then you won’t bother to ask the question: why is this the way things are. And the last thing the liberal media wants you or anyone to do, including themselves (being the investigative “Journos” that they are), is ask the question why.
Well, I’ve got a new normal for you CNN: your ratings will continue to plummet until you vanish from the airwaves. Now that’s a new normal I can live with.
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Notes:
Fn. 1:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/20/news/economy/
New_normal_economy.fortune/index.htm
Culture Crusader 