January 17, 2020

I learned a useful new word today: “precarity.’ I learned it from Cynthia Miller Idriss, who runs the Polarization and Extremism Research Center at American University. She appeared on a couple of CNN’s Sunday shows.

You could say that precarity is the word of the century.

It is defined as a permanent state of insecurity, and refers to the underlying instinct that drives xenophobia in general and the current revolt of the far right in particular. 

When all attempts at legitimization are stripped away, precarity defines the fundamental Republican argument of white male privilege: a massed body of “others” is coming to take your power/livelihood away.

Precarity.  ‘Good word!