THE NEW YORK TIMES HAS A FEVAH, AND IT NEEDS MORE EXISTENTIAL DREAD:  The Golden Age of ‘Existential’ Dread.

We say it with abandon now, in every context, about the continued existence of big things and the continued existence of small ones. Artificial intelligence, says Elon Musk, may pose an existential threat to humanity — but also, say some medical professionals, to the significantly more limited field of human radiologists, who fear being replaced by software. Donald Trump’s control of the American nuclear arsenal, according to a psychiatrist named John Zinner, poses an existential threat to the world; to others, Facebook’s recent string of bad press presents an existential threat to a large company. (Tech businesses are rife with existential threats: Uber presents an existential threat to taxi services, but it also faces existential threats from potential regulation.) Brain injuries are an existential threat to the sport of football. Tax cuts are an existential issue for the Republican Party. Anything that has the potential to end can be matched with some factor that promises to hasten that end — and what is there in the universe that cannot, in theory, cease to exist?

Gee, wait ‘til the author discovers the 1970s.