Word: scapegoat
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...easy to say that the Iranians need a scapegoat and the regime wants to muster patriotic support. You are wrong through and through. What this nation has suffered at the hands of the Shah is no less serious than what the Jews suffered at the hands of the Nazis...
...living in an urban Beverly Farms--with higher property values and a more liberal social climate--too much to bear. Those that can afford to save enough will move to Quincy, Milton and the other inner suburbs; those who cannot will turn on the nearest and most vulnerable scapegoat--each other...
Ironically, it was not KGB infiltration that led to his downfall, it was domestic politics. By foregoing the flamboyance of some of his colleagues, Helms had also lacked their visibility--and thus did not make an easy target or scapegoat when CIA projects went awry, as they did with increasing frequency after the early "successes" of the Cold War. He covered his tracks well, and when superiors sacked other, more imaginiative CIA men in the shake-ups that followed such failures as the ill-advised backing of Indonesian rebels against Sukarano in 1958 or the doomed Bay of Pigs invasion...
...petty day-to-day details are ignored, postponed or handled by subordinates. Personality clashes are reduced; too much is usually at stake for normal jealousies to operate. In a crisis only the strongest strive for responsibility; the rest are intimidated by the knowledge that failure will demand a scapegoat. Many hide behind a consensus that they will be reluctant to shape; others concentrate on registering objections that will provide alibis after the event. The few prepared to grapple with circumstances are usually undisturbed in the eye of a hurricane. All around them there is commotion; they themselves operate in solitude...
...fact remains, however, that even if the fighting in South Boston were miraculously to end tomorrow, the larger problem of racial hostility throughout the city would not: South Boston is but a symbol and, in some ways, a scapegoat for a citywide disease which was allowed to surface in 1974, and which has persisted ever since...