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So What Makes You So Sure Normal Is A Good Thing?
Not long after the pandemic became accepted as a real thing among those tuned into the reality station, the word ‘normal’ started cropping up quite a bit in stories and conversations dealing with the topic of what is supposed to come next. There was — and still is — this yearning to return to solid ground. So supposedly, whenever we return to ‘normal’, then we will all be back on solid ground and all will be right with the world.
Because what could possibly be better than that?
Well, once upon a time, slavery was normal. Of course, I would argue that it wasn’t so normal for the slaves, but it was pretty normal for most of the white folks because they possessed the power to define it. Even for those who thoroughly opposed the practice, like John Brown, slavery was still the way things were.
Hitler’s Germany was normal for Hitler, just not normal for the Jews. The Khmer Rouge regime, responsible for the killing of more than 1 million Cambodians during their 4-year reign of terror from 1975 until 1979, probably thought they were establishing a new normal that felt perfectly fine for them. For those who didn’t quite fit into the new normal, they were dumped into the killing fields.
Normal is defined by those who decide to declare a particular situation normal. Whether they are those with…
