Opinion By Charles Lane: Overuse of ‘existential threat’ is a crisis of existential proportions
has called the debt limit extension bill that Speaker Kevin McCarthy barely steered through the House a way to force McCarthy and the president “to sit down and deal with an existential threat.”
If a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, then by all means let us use the present one to swear off this , which is not only redundant but also pretentious — and not particularly easy to pronounce or spell, either.A world without ET would be a world in which consumers of journalism and political speeches would feel slightly less like they are being harangued and slightly more like they are being persuaded.
To label something a threat, or a risk, or a danger, without using the bombastic e-word as a verbal crutch, would encourage those who issue warnings to be specific and those who receive them to be deliberate. And no matter how serious an impending problem might be, freaking out does not make it easier to solve.
Of course, “existential threat” has its defenders. Noticing the hot ET trend in 2019, linguist John McWhorter of Columbia University celebrated it,as a benign example of English’s adaptation to the ever-changing demands of its speakers. “Existential threat,” he argued, meets a need “to move, stimulate, and hold the attention of those we talk to, and this requires the constant renewal of words designed to grab the lapels and register our sincerity and passion.
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