Panic Pandemic

It must be accepted that any attempt to discuss the panic pandemic currently happening in the world is necessarily limited: we are in the middle of the experience, so we can only offer impressions, not conclusions. Further, anything we mention now may be far downstream (and possibly less relevant) in a matter of days or even hours, as conditions seem to change constantly. That said, I do feel it’s important to take issue with what is now being touted as “common sense” when it’s really just “whatever they tell us to do.”

Overton Window

Brexit and the election of President Trump had many in the chattering classes discussing the shift of the Overton Window. Also known as a “window of discourse,” this refers to the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. These two events in 2016 so shifted the discussion such that what was previously considered outside the mainstream (a border poll in Ireland, presidential policy conducted by Twitter) became mainstream. A “new normal” now meant that whether you liked it or not, the intellectual ground had shifted.