Word: problems
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...that Barrett's delusions--blown up by the author into chapters' worth of prose--are caused by an imbalance in the pH of his bloodstream, easily correctable by the addition of hydrogen ions. Percy's reduction of the alienated condition of man to a manageable chemical problem mocks not only all his own best writing but also some very intelligent philosophy which he has previously raided for the substance of his own work. Perhaps the self-appointed Kierkegaard of the mint julep golf circuit would blame his intellectual forebear's disaffection on anemia...
There is a problem in the metamorphosis, though; Klein's politics haven't changed as much as her lifestyle. "Clearly, I'm still a leftist," she says. "I'm not sure that my job does enough for other people; I really am not. I don't want to say that it absolutely doesn't, but I don't want to lie to you and say, 'Hey, I'm really doing a lot for humankind...
Pearl says she hopes the review "will place the assembly in a position of direct involvement in decision-making." The current problem, she observes, "is that when the assembly passes a resolution, it is in a complete vacuum--no one has to listen. We should be involved in the meetings where decisions are made, not just be stuck reacting to those decisions with resolutions...
...have hit on a truth that murderous regimes have always known: that many people secretly admire murders, even real ones, provided they can be kept at a respectable distance and performed with a touch of class. After all, murder can be the most romantic, if temporary, solution to a problem, which is why the Romantics could not get enough of it. Thomas De Quincey, the Romantic essayist, went so far as to propose "Murder as One of the Fine Arts." Historian Franklin Ford observed, in a brilliant article in Harvard magazine (February 1976), that throughout most of the 18th century...
When a government proves to function in a social vacuum, the process of putting it away is more of a problem. Short of war there are words of protest, but in the middle distance the assassin has free rein. The rein might be shortened considerably if the words of protest were harsher or more frequent, or, better still, if they were attached to an economic quarantine. To treat killer governments as pariahs would only be fair, after all, and the purpose of a quarantine is to prevent contagion. To date, however, the world seems to be going on the hope...