You're right to wonder about the framing of a cliff (says the historian of the term "dropout" and how we started framing the act of leaving high school as a crisis). John Kingdon's theory of agenda setting is big on there being a permanent class of crisis-hawkers and solution-peddlers, and when their paths intersect with politics, you get major policy change. So "crossing the streams" was a term before Ghostbusters, and even worse, political scientists can claim credit for it.
Being a gentle skeptic is an honorable role for journalists, and you and Matt Barnum (and all others of your temperament) earn my respect every time you do so. The dynamic feels a bit like the rhetorical equivalent of Gresham's Law: public policy discourse tends to run towards the most hyperbolic. Unfortunately, COVID politics have ruined a perfectly good term: endemic, as in "We should not be apathetic at the endemic failure of child care policy in this country." That would be both an alternative to crisis rhetoric and a true reflection of concerns by advocates. But I feel it's also not viable, at least not for a few years. In some areas, "undercurrent" would make sense (the "undercurrent of administrative burdens" suggests a physicality that many people would probably vouch as their experience). The search for evocative phrasing that isn't about crisis war famine apocalypse is worth it, I think.
You're right to wonder about the framing of a cliff (says the historian of the term "dropout" and how we started framing the act of leaving high school as a crisis). John Kingdon's theory of agenda setting is big on there being a permanent class of crisis-hawkers and solution-peddlers, and when their paths intersect with politics, you get major policy change. So "crossing the streams" was a term before Ghostbusters, and even worse, political scientists can claim credit for it.
Being a gentle skeptic is an honorable role for journalists, and you and Matt Barnum (and all others of your temperament) earn my respect every time you do so. The dynamic feels a bit like the rhetorical equivalent of Gresham's Law: public policy discourse tends to run towards the most hyperbolic. Unfortunately, COVID politics have ruined a perfectly good term: endemic, as in "We should not be apathetic at the endemic failure of child care policy in this country." That would be both an alternative to crisis rhetoric and a true reflection of concerns by advocates. But I feel it's also not viable, at least not for a few years. In some areas, "undercurrent" would make sense (the "undercurrent of administrative burdens" suggests a physicality that many people would probably vouch as their experience). The search for evocative phrasing that isn't about crisis war famine apocalypse is worth it, I think.