Word: ritualizes
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...from the early Middle Ages, Ariès calls "the tame death," a calm acceptance of the end of life. He notes that in the Song of Roland and the Arthurian legends, heroes had premonitions of their deaths. In the final hour they prepared themselves with a simple, dignified ritual that reflected a world made whole by faith, community and a sense of common destiny. To die was to enter a long sleep until the day of resurrection...
Laqueur dislikes the very word Holocaust: holokaustein means to bring a burnt offering, and "it was not the intention of the Nazis to make a sacrifice of this kind, and the position of the Jews was not that of a ritual victim." Still, the term has entered the world's vocabulary (der Holocaust has been naturalized in German), and survivors themselves employ it. The Holocaust Library, distributed by Schocken Books, for instance, is a nonprofit publishing enterprise created and managed by refugees. Most of the titles belong to the literature of testimony-The Holocaust Kingdom by Alexander Donat...
...problem with television's political omnipotence is that it turns issues into slogans. TV concentrates almost exclusively on confrontations, statement and counterstatement, all reduced to brief segments of video tape. TV also demands filmable ritual: the waving placards and red-white-and-blue streamers of the quadrennial conventions, celebrated with the ceremonial jollity of an Easter egg hunt perpetuated for children who have grown into sullen adolescence. When TV has finally crowned its Muppety candidates, it reaches for their purses. Of the $60 million in federal funds that Reagan and Carter spent to campaign against each other, more than...
...Viet Nam as a symbol of American frustration and impotence. American diplomatic support and military backing could not prevent the fall of the Shah, who for decades seemed the paragon of a U.S. friend overseas. Then came the humiliation of the embassy seizure, the burning of American flags, the ritual chanting of "Death to the great satan!" by mullah-led mobs. Recent years have spawned an array offerees seemingly inimical to American interests, ranging from the extortionist pricing policies of OPEC to xenophobic Islamic fundamentalism. Iran, in a peculiarly ugly way, has managed to represent both...
What is a nice Catholic girl doing in a situation like this? Is she simply rounding out her education with a cram course in profane love, radical politics and the impersonal ritual of feticide? Not quite...