“UNPRECEDENTED”

Have you heard that word lately? Every facet of American life has used it recently. Canadian wildfires–unprecedented; rivers of moisture in California–unprecedented; mass murder occurrences–unprecedented; a former president indicted on 91 felony charges–unprecedented; Supreme Court Justices accepting millions of dollars in gifts without required disclosures–unprecedented. The label we slap on all this is “The new normal”. The real truth here is that “unprecedented” cannot be the accepted normal without severe consequences in all areas–whether it be weather, society, politics or any other activity. Some people delight in variance from the norm but we always should be able to distinguish between the normal and the abnormal. Today’s generation is growing up in a world with all these abnormal events and soon they will become examples of acceptable behavior or results. We can stop all these unusual and unappreciated occurrences but it must be done consciously–this won’t happen by accident. So our point is: just like a parent telling a young child that cartoons are not real we need to differentiate the “unprecedented” events from normality. If we fail the negative trends that were “unprecedented” will become even more tragic.