There was a period not too long ago — perhaps ten years back, or maybe 15 — when one could not move without coming across a parody of a British World War II–era poster that featured the words Keep Calm and Carry On emblazoned beneath a stylized Tudor Crown. For a while this advice was ubiquitous. Variously, we were instructed to keep calm and wash our hands; to keep calm and drive safely; to keep calm and drink wine; and even, at Christmastime, to keep calm and pop Bubble Wrap. The details varied, but the overall injunction did not: The message, all told, was that panicking does not help anyone.
It has long struck me as rather amusing that this trend peaked, and then disappeared from memetic use, around 2016, at the exact moment when we might have benefited the most from its prescription. For it was in that idiosyncratic year that Donald Trump was first elected president of the United States and, in response, that so many of the people who work in and around political journalism began slowly but surely to lose their minds.
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