Unacceptable Political Quotes

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It is entirely unacceptable that I should have no voice in the political affairs of my own country, for I am not a ward of America; I am one of the first Americans to arrive on these shores.
James Baldwin (The Fire Next Time)
For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three non-fatal shootings. And, folks, this is unacceptable in America.
George W. Bush
Brutalist architecture was Modernism's angry underside, and was never, much as some would rather it were, a mere aesthetic style. It was a political aesthetic, an attitude, a weapon, dedicated to the precept that nothing was too good for ordinary people. Now, after decades of neglect, it's devided between 'eyesores' and 'icons'; fine for the Barbican's stockbrokers but unacceptable for the ordinary people who were always its intended clients.
Owen Hatherley (A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain)
Jesus’ life and ministry consistently reveal the humble character of a servant. Though he rightfully owned the entire cosmos, he, by choice, had no place to lay his head (Matt. 8:20). Though he rightfully should have been honored by the world’s most esteemed dignitaries, he chose to fellowship with tax collectors, drunkards, prostitutes, and other socially unacceptable sinners (Matt. 11:19; Mark 2:15; Luke 5:29–30; 15:1; cf. Luke 7:31–50). Though he rightfully could have demanded service and worship from all, he served the lame and the sick by healing them, the demonized by delivering them, and the outcasts by befriending them. This is what the kingdom of God looks like.
Gregory A. Boyd (The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church)
the conventional sociology of literature or culture, which modestly limits itself to the identification of class motifs or values in a given text, and feels that its work is done when it shows how a given artifact “reflects” its social background, is utterly unacceptable.
Fredric Jameson (The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act)
There is absolutely no reason to suppose that white people are better equipped to frame the laws by which I am to be governed than I am. It is entirely unacceptable that I should have no voice in the political affairs of my own country, for I am not a ward of America; I am one of the first Americans to arrive on these shores.
James Baldwin (The Fire Next Time)
That is why it is unacceptable in an age such as our own, when the “holy trinity” of technology, economics, and politics proclaims a solution to everything, without exception.
László F. Földényi (Dostoyevsky Reads Hegel in Siberia and Bursts into Tears (The Margellos World Republic of Letters))
If black males are socialized from birth to embrace the notion that their manhood will be determined by whether or not they can dominate and control others and yet the political system they live within (imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy) prevents most of them from having access to socially acceptable positions of power and dominance, then they will claim their patriarchal manhood, through socially unacceptable channels. They will enact rituals of blood, of patriarchal manhood by using violence to dominate and control.
bell hooks (We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity)
What these “Why are you censoring me?” people misunderstand is that no one is forcing anyone to change the way they speak. You can say anything you want; you won’t face legal action for calling someone the N-word. But it doesn’t mean you can say it free of consequences. You can totally start your company emails to your boss with “Dear ugly bitch”—you’ll just get fired for it. By committing to march down the path of “political incorrectness,” you’re saying you’re willing to sacrifice relationships with anyone who finds your language unacceptable.
Franchesca Ramsey (Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist)
In his book Politics, which is the foundation of the study of political systems, and very interesting, Aristotle talked mainly about Athens. But he studied various political systems - oligarchy, monarchy - and didn't like any of the particularly. He said democracy is probably the best system, but it has problems, and he was concerned with the problems. One problem that he was concerned with is quite striking because it runs right up to the present. He pointed out that in a democracy, if the people - people didn't mean people, it meant freemen, not slaves, not women - had the right to vote, the poor would be the majority, and they would use their voting power to take away property from the rich, which wouldn't be fair, so we have to prevent this. James Madison made the same pint, but his model was England. He said if freemen had democracy, then the poor farmers would insist on taking property from the rich. They would carry out what we these days call land reform. and that's unacceptable. Aristotle and Madison faced the same problem but made the opposite decisions. Aristotle concluded that we should reduce ineqality so the poor wouldn't take property from the rich. And he actually propsed a visin for a city that would put in pace what we today call welfare-state programs, common meals, other support systems. That would reduce inequality, and with it the problem of the poor taking property from the rich. Madison's decision was the opposite. We should reduce democracy so the poor won't be able to get together to do this. If you look at the design of the U.S. constitutional system, it followed Madison's approach. The Madisonian system placed power in the hands of the Senate. The executive in those days was more or less an administrator, not like today. The Senate consisted of "the wealth of the nation," those who had sympathy for property owners and their rights. That's where power should be. The Senate, remember, wasn't elected. It was picked by legislatures, who were themselves very much subject to control by the rich and the powerful. The House, which was closer to the population, had much less power. And there were all sorts of devices to keep people from participation too much - voting restrictions and property restrictions. The idea was to prevent the threat of democracy. This goal continues right to the present. It has taken different forms, but the aim remains the same.
Noam Chomsky (Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire (American Empire Project))
Remember one thing as South Africa prepares to go to the polls this week and the world grapples with the ascendancy of the African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma: South Africa is not Zimbabwe. In South Africa, no one doubts that Wednesday's elections will be free and fair. While there is an unacceptable degree of government corruption, there is no evidence of the wholesale kleptocracy of Robert Mugabe's elite. While there has been the abuse of the organs of state by the ruling ANC, there is not the state terror of Mugabe's Zanu-PF. And while there is a clear left bias to Zuma's ANC, there is no suggestion of the kind of voluntarist experimentation that has brought Zimbabwe to its knees.
Mark Gevisser
For those local and international elites who maintain control over most of the world's wealth, social revolution is an abomination. Whether it be peaceful or violent is a question of no great moment to them. Peaceful reforms that infringe upon their profitable accumulations and threaten their class privileges are as unacceptable to them as the social upheaval by revolution.
Michael Parenti (Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism)
Any diplomat must be able to engage people across all kinds of political and moral divide; any historian, any student of foreign policy, must come to understand a wide variety of attitudes and opinions that, often for extremely good reasons, are largely unacceptable in polite American society today. Whether the issue is racism, misogyny, jihadi ideology, Islamophobia, homophobia, xenophobia, communism, fascism, or, yes, antisemitism, the student of foreign policy must develop the capacity to engage calmly, dispassionately, and sometimes even cooperatively with people committed to utterly revolting ideas.
Walter Russell Mead (The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People)
The Overton window is the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. It is also known as the window of discourse. The term is named after Joseph P. Overton, who stated that an idea's political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within this range, rather than on politicians' individual preferences. The Overton Window is an approach to identifying the ideas that define the spectrum of acceptability of governmental policies. Politicians can only act within the acceptable range. Shifting the Overton Window involves proponents of policies outside the window persuading the public to expand the window. Proponents of current policies, or similar ones within the window, seek to convince people that policies outside it should be deemed unacceptable. In 1998, Noam Chomsky said: "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
Wikipedia: Overton Window
Power itself is founded largely on disgust. The whole of advertising, the whole of political discourse, is a public insult to the intelligence, to reason - but an insult in which we collaborate, abjectly subscribing to a silent interaction. The day of hidden persuasion is over: those who govern us now resort unapologetically to arm-twisting pure and simple. The prototype here was a banker got up like a vampire, saying, 'I am after you for your money' . A decade has already gone by since this kind of obscenity was introduced, with the government's blessing, into our social mores. At the time we thought the ad feeble because of its aggressive vulgarity. In point of fact it was a prophetic commercial, full of intimations of the future shape of social relationships, because it operated, precisely, in terms of disgust, avidity and rape. The same goes for pornographic and food advertising, which are also powered by shamelessness and lust, by a strategic logic of violation and anxiety. Nowadays you can seduce a woman with the words, 'I am interested in your cunt' . The same kind of crassness has triumphed in the realm of art, whose mounds of trivia may be reduced to a single pronouncement of the type, 'What we want from you is stupidity and bad taste' . And the fact is that we do succumb to this mass extortion, with its subtle infusion of guilt. It is true in a sense that nothing really disgusts us any more. In our eclectic culture, which embraces the debris of all others in a promiscuous confusion, nothing is unacceptable. But for this very reason disgust is nevertheless on the increase - the desire to spew out this promiscuity, this indifference to everything no matter how bad, this viscous adherence of opposites. To the extent that this happens, what is on the increase is disgust over the lack of disgust. An allergic temptation to reject everything en bloc: to refuse all the gentle brainwashing, the soft-sold overfeeding, the tolerance, the pressure to embrace synergy and consensus.
Jean Baudrillard (The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena)
We have long known that in closed societies, the the arrival of democracy, with its clashing voices and differing opinions, can be "complex and frightening," as [Karen] Stenner puts it, for people unaccustomed to public dissent. The noise of argument, the constant hum of disagreement--these can irritate people who prefer to live in a society tied together by a single narrative. The strong preference for unity, at least among a portion of the population, helps explain why numerous liberal or democratic revolutions, from 1789 onward, ended in dictatorships that enjoyed wide support. Isaiah Berlin once wrote of the human need to believe that "somewhere, in the past or in the future, in divine revelation or in the mind of an individual thinker, in the pronouncements of history or science... there is a final solution." Berlin observed that not all of the things that human beings think are good or desirable are compatible. Efficiency, liberty, justice, equality, the demands of the individual, and the demands of the group--all these things push us in different directions. And this, Berlin wrote, is unacceptable to many people: "to admit that the fulfilment of some of our ideals may in principle make the fulfilment of others impossible is to say that the notion of total human fulfilment is a formal contradiction, a metaphysical chimera." Nevertheless, unity is a chimera that some will always pursue.
Anne Applebaum (Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism)
The remedy is to terminate them after the founding generation dies out. Older foundations like Ford should be sunset immediately and its funds distributed to hospitals and other institutions that serve the needy and the poor, recipients for whom the word “charity” was invented. As the tax law is presently designed, the Ford Foundation will exist forever and will be accountable to no one except a self-perpetuating board, which is accountable to no one. This is undemocratic and unacceptable. Republicans have ignored the problems created by this system for far too long. Unless they are prepared to get serious about fighting the war the left has declared, unless the powers of this shadow political universe are checked, the progressives’ march toward a societal transformation cannot be arrested, let alone stopped.
David Horowitz (Big Agenda: President Trump's Plan to Save America)
To summarize the discussion so far: I have identified six kinds of reasons for objecting to various forms of inequality and for seeking to eliminate or reduce them: (1) Inequality can be objectionable because it creates humiliating differences in status. (2) Inequality can be objectionable because it gives the rich unacceptable forms of power over those who have less. (3) Inequality can be objectionable because it undermines equality of economic opportunity. (4) Inequality can be objectionable because it undermines the fairness of political institutions. (5) Inequality can be objectionable because it results from violation of a requirement of equal concern for the interests of those to whom the government is obligated to provide some benefit. (6) Inequality of income and wealth can be objectionable because it arises from economic institutions that are unfair.
T.M. Scanlon (Why Does Inequality Matter? (Uehiro Series in Practical Ethics))
Peace cannot require Palestinians to acquiesce to the denial of what was done to them. Neither can it require Israeli Jews to view their own presence in Palestine as illegitimate or to change their belief in their right to live there because of ancient historical and spiritual ties. Peace, rather, must be based on how we act toward each other now. It is unacceptable for a Palestinian to draw on his history of oppression and suffering to justify harming innocent Israeli civilians. It is equally unacceptable for an Israeli to invoke his belief in an ancient covenant between God and Abraham to justify bulldozing the home and seizing the land of a Palestinian farmer. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which proposes a political framework for a resolution to the conflict in Ireland, and which was overwhelmingly endorsed in referendums, sets out two principles from which Palestinians and Israelis could learn. First “[i]t is recognized that victims have a right to remember as well as to contribute to a changed society.” Second, whatever political arrangements are freely and democratically chosen for the governance of Northern Ireland, the power of the government “shall be exercised with rigorous impartiality on behalf of all the people in the diversity of their identities and traditions and shall be founded on the principles of full respect for, and equality of civil, political, social, and cultural rights, of freedom from discrimination for all citizens, and of parity of esteem and of just and equal treatment for the identity, ethos, and aspirations of both communities.” Northern Ireland is still a long way from achieving this ideal, but life has vastly improved since the worst days of “the Troubles” and it is a paradise on earth compared to Palestine/Israel.
Ali Abunimah (One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse)
And despite the punishments for boundary crossing, we continue to live, daily, with all our contradictory differences. Here I still stand, unmistakably "feminine" in style, and "womanly" in personal experience - and unacceptably "masculine" in political interests and in my dedication to writing poetry that stretches beyond the woman's domain of home. Here I am, assigned a "female" sex on my birth certificate, but not considered womanly enough - because I am a lesbian - to retain custody of the children I delivered from my woman's body. As a white girl raised in a segregated culture, I was expected to be "ladylike" - sexually repressed but acquiescent to white men of my class - while other, darker women were damned as "promiscuous" so their bodies could be seized and exploited. I've worked outside the home for at least part of my living since I was a teenager - a fact deemed masculine by some. But my occupation is now that of teacher, work suitably feminine for a woman as long as I don't tell my students I'm a lesbian - a sexuality thought too aggressive and "masculine" to fit with my "feminity.
Minnie Bruce Pratt (S/He)
I have always, deeply, violently, detested those who look for a position (political, philosophical, religious, whatever) in a work of art rather than searching it for an effort to know, to understand, to grasp this or that aspect of reality. Until Stravinsky, music was never able to give barbaric rites a grand form. We could not imagine them musically. Which means: we could not imagine the beauty of the barbaric. Without its beauty, the barbaric would remain incomprehensible. (I stress this: to know any phenomenon deeply requires understanding its beauty, actual or potential.) Saying that a bloody rite does possess some beauty—there's the scandal, unbearable, unacceptable. And yet, unless we understand this scandal, unless we get to the very bottom of it, we cannot understand much about man. Stravinsky gives the barbaric rite a musical form that is powerful and convincing but does not lie: listen to the last section of the Sacre, the "Danse sacrale" ("Sacrificial Dance"): it does not dodge the horror. It is there. Merely shown? Not denounced? But if it were denounced—stripped of its beauty, shown in its hideousness—it would be a cheat, a simplification, a piece of "propaganda." It is because it is beautiful that the girl's murder is so horrible.
Milan Kundera (Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts)
Tragedy springs from its own peculiar sorcery, with treachery, born of envy or ambition, a usual instigator. Treachery is apparent only after the events staged are well over, as we know, its victims dead, or living and smarting under its tricks, realizing too late how they have been misused: if indeed they are ever cognizant of its role, if still players, to this wonder and rue. Most unacceptable is its subtlety, the double-face which double-deals, the Iago perpetrators hidden for decades, smiling the smiles of polite and not so polite society. They nod and wave, heroes to many; sly politicians these Claudiuses. Time favours the Macbeths and forgets the maligned. The former enjoy live, some even oblivious to their lies as being lies, for they prefer to bask in blessings, aping the certainties of creed, cheating death and duty while in pavilions of ease. They succeed on their success, trite or vast; wealth for some, and enviably, fame for the few. The unaware, their victims, float off to obscurity on ruptured vessels of injustice to theater lands unknown, never really knowing why, if the job's done property. Normality is, truthfully, life's whore, readily embraced and conveniently embracing; secretly, it has the clap. Thinking of plot should then give pause. The treacherous cheat fate and re-write, their 'intended history'. Call it fate. They become authors of an illicit story, penmen of their own gods, living their own fresh creation through a new, egregious, utilitarian drama that is untouched by either truth or beauty.
Barnaby Allen (Pacific Viking)
The government has a great need to restore its credibility, to make people forget its history and rewrite it. The intelligentsia have to a remarkable degree undertaken this task. It is also necessary to establish the "lessons" that have to be drawn from the war, to ensure that these are conceived on the narrowest grounds, in terms of such socially neutral categories as "stupidity" or "error" or "ignorance" or perhaps "cost." Why? Because soon it will be necessary to justify other confrontations, perhaps other U.S. interventions in the world, other Vietnams. But this time, these will have to be successful intervention, which don't slip out of control. Chile, for example. It is even possible for the press to criticize successful interventions - the Dominican Republic, Chile, etc. - as long as these criticisms don't exceed "civilized limits," that is to say, as long as they don't serve to arouse popular movements capable of hindering these enterprises, and are not accompanied by any rational analysis of the motives of U.S. imperialism, something which is complete anathema, intolerable to liberal ideology. How is the liberal press proceeding with regard to Vietnam, that sector which supported the "doves"? By stressing the "stupidity" of the U.S. intervention; that's a politically neutral term. It would have been sufficient to find an "intelligent" policy. The war was thus a tragic error in which good intentions were transmuted into bad policies, because of a generation of incompetent and arrogant officials. The war's savagery is also denounced, but that too, is used as a neutral category...Presumably the goals were legitimate - it would have been all right to do the same thing, but more humanely... The "responsible" doves were opposed to the war - on a pragmatic basis. Now it is necessary to reconstruct the system of beliefs according to which the United States is the benefactor of humanity, historically committed to freedom, self-determination, and human rights. With regard to this doctrine, the "responsible" doves share the same presuppositions as the hawks. They do not question the right of the United States to intervene in other countries. Their criticism is actually very convenient for the state, which is quite willing to be chided for its errors, as long as the fundamental right of forceful intervention is not brought into question. ... The resources of imperialist ideology are quite vast. It tolerates - indeed, encourages - a variety of forms of opposition, such as those I have just illustrated. It is permissible to criticize the lapses of the intellectuals and of government advisers, and even to accuse them of an abstract desire for "domination," again a socially neutral category not linked in any way to concrete social and economic structures. But to relate that abstract "desire for domination" to the employment of force by the United States government in order to preserve a certain system of world order, specifically, to ensure that the countries of the world remain open insofar as possible to exploitation by U.S.-based corporations - that is extremely impolite, that is to argue in an unacceptable way.
Noam Chomsky (The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature)
I have talked to many people about this and it seems to be a kind of mystical experience. The preparation is unconscious, the realization happens in a flaming second. It was on Third Avenue. The trains were grinding over my head. The snow was nearly waist-high in the gutters and uncollected garbage was scattered in a dirty mess. The wind was cold, and frozen pieces of paper went scraping along the pavement. I stopped to look in a drug-store window where a latex cooch dancer was undulating by a concealed motor–and something burst in my head, a kind of light and a kind of feeling blended into an emotion which if it had spoken would have said, “My God! I belong here. Isn’t this wonderful?” Everything fell into place. I saw every face I passed. I noticed every doorway and the stairways to apartments. I looked across the street at the windows, lace curtains and potted geraniums through sooty glass. It was beautiful–but most important, I was part of it. I was no longer a stranger. I had become a New Yorker. Now there may be people who move easily into New York without travail, but most I have talked to about it have had some kind of trial by torture before acceptance. And the acceptance is a double thing. It seems to me that the city finally accepts you just as you finally accept the city. A young man in a small town, a frog in a small puddle, if he kicks his feet is able to make waves, get mud in his neighbor’s eyes–make some impression. He is known. His family is known. People watch him with some interest, whether kindly or maliciously. He comes to New York and no matter what he does, no one is impressed. He challenges the city to fight and it licks him without being aware of him. This is a dreadful blow to a small-town ego. He hates the organism that ignores him. He hates the people who look through him. And then one day he falls into place, accepts the city and does not fight it any more. It is too huge to notice him and suddenly the fact that it doesn’t notice him becomes the most delightful thing in the world. His self-consciousness evaporates. If he is dressed superbly well–there are half a million people dressed equally well. If he is in rags–there are a million ragged people. If he is tall, it is a city of tall people. If he is short the streets are full of dwarfs; if ugly, ten perfect horrors pass him in one block; if beautiful, the competition is overwhelming. If he is talented, talent is a dime a dozen. If he tries to make an impression by wearing a toga–there’s a man down the street in a leopard skin. Whatever he does or says or wears or thinks he is not unique. Once accepted this gives him perfect freedom to be himself, but unaccepted it horrifies him. I don’t think New York City is like other cities. It does not have character like Los Angeles or New Orleans. It is all characters–in fact, it is everything. It can destroy a man, but if his eyes are open it cannot bore him. New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it–once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough. All of everything is concentrated here, population, theatre, art, writing, publishing, importing, business, murder, mugging, luxury, poverty. It is all of everything. It goes all right. It is tireless and its air is charged with energy. I can work longer and harder without weariness in New York than anyplace else….
John Steinbeck
Self-Obsession & Self-Presentation on Social-Media" Some people always post their cars/bikes photos because they love their cars/bikes so much. Some people always post their dogs/cats/birds/fish/pets photos because they love their pets so much. Some people always post their children’s/families photos because they love their children/families so much. Some people always post their daily happy/sad moments because they love sharing their daily lives so much. Some people always post their poems/songs/novels/writings because they love being poets/lyricists/novelists/writers so much. Some people always copy paste other people’s writings/quotes without mentioning the actual writers name because they love seeking attention/fame so much. [Unacceptable & Illegal] Some people always post their plants/garden’s photos because they love planting/gardening so much. Some people always post their art/paintings because they love their creativity so much. Some people always post their home-made food because they love cooking/thoughtful-presentation so much. Some people always post their makeup/hairstyles selfies because they love wearing makeup/doing hair so much. Some people always post their party related photos because they love those parties so much. Some people always post their travel related photos because they love traveling so much. Some people always post their selfies because they love taking selfies so much. Some people always post restaurant/street-foods because they love eating in restaurants/streets so much. Some people always post their job-related photos because they love their jobs so much. Some people always post religious things because they love spreading their religion so much. Some people always post political things because they love politics/power so much. Some people always post inspirational messages because they love being spiritual. Some people always share others posts because they love sharing links so much. Some people always post their creative photographs because they love photography so much. Some people always post their business-related products because they love advertising so much. And some people always post complaints about other people’s post because they love complaining so much
Zakia FR
While David runs the financial end of the Rockefeller dynasty, Nelson runs the political. Nelson would like to be President of the United States. But, unfortunately for him, he is unacceptable to the vast majority of the grass roots of his own party. The next best thing to being President is controlling a President. Nelson Rockefeller and Richard Nixon are supposed to be bitter political competitors. In a sense they are, but that still does not preclude Rockefeller from asserting dominion over Mr. Nixon. When Mr. Nixon and Mr. Rockefeller competed for the Republican nomination in 1968, Rockefeller naturally would have preferred to win the prize, but regardless of who won, he would control the highest office in the land. You will recall that right in the middle of drawing up the Republican platform in 1960, Mr. Nixon suddenly left Chicago and flew to New York to meet with Nelson Rockefeller in what Barry Goldwater described as the "Munich of the Republican Party." There was no political reason why Mr. Nixon needed to crawl to Mr. Rockefeller. He had the convention all sewed up. The Chicago Tribune cracked that it was like Grant surrendering to Lee. In The Making of the President, 1960, Theodore White noted that Nixon accepted all the Rockefeller terms for this meeting, including provisions "that Nixon telephone Rockefeller personally with his request for a meeting; that they meet at the Rockefeller apartment…that their meeting be secret and later be announced in a press release from the Governor, not Nixon; that the meeting be clearly announced as taking place at the Vice President's request; that the statement of policy issuing from it be long, detailed, inclusive, not a summary communiqué." The meeting produced the infamous "Compact of Fifth Avenue" in which the Republican Platform was scrapped and replaced by Rockefeller's socialist plans. The Wall Street Journal of July 25, 1960, commented: "…a little band of conservatives within the party…are shoved to the sidelines… [T]he fourteen points are very liberal indeed; they comprise a platform akin in many ways to the Democratic platform and they are a far cry from the things that conservative men think the Republican Party ought to stand for…" As Theodore White put it: "Never had the quadrennial liberal swoop of the regulars been more nakedly dramatized than by the open compact of Fifth Avenue. Whatever honor they might have been able to carry from their services on the platform committee had been wiped out. A single night's meeting of the two men in a millionaire's triplex apartment in Babylon-by-the-Hudson, eight hundred and thirty miles away, was about to overrule them; they were exposed as clowns for all the world to see." The whole story behind what happened in Rockefeller's apartment will doubtless never be known. We can only make an educated guess in light of subsequent events. But it is obvious that since that time Mr. Nixon has been in the Rockefeller orbit.
Gary Allen (None Dare Call It Conspiracy)
Lieutenant Smith was asked by Mister Zumwald to get him a drink,” Wilkes said. “She responded with physical violence. I counseled her on conduct unbecoming of an officer and, when she reacted with foul language, on disrespect to a superior officer, sir, and I’ll stand by that position. Sir.” “I agree that her actions were unbecoming, Captain,” Steve said, mildly. “She really should have resolved it with less force. Which I told her as well as a strong lecture on respect to a superior officer. On the other hand, Captain, Mister Zumwald physically accosted her, grabbing her arm and, when she protested, called her a bitch. Were you aware of that, Captain?” “She did say something about it, sir,” Wilkes said. “However… ” “I also understand that you spent some time with Mister Zumwald afterwards,” Steve said. “Rather late. Did you at any time express to Mister Zumwald that accosting any woman, much less an officer of… what was it? ‘The United States Naval services’ was unacceptable behavior, Captain?” “Sir,” Wilkes said. “Mister Zumwald is a major Hollywood executive… ” “Was,” Steve said. “Excuse me, sir?” Wilkes said. “Was a major Hollywood executive,” Steve said. “Right now, Ernest Zumwald, Captain, is a fucking refugee off a fucking lifeboat. Period fucking dot. He’s given a few days grace, like most refugees, to get his headspace and timing back, then he can decide if he wants to help out or go in with the sick, lame and lazy. And in this case he’s a fucking refugee who thinks it’s acceptable to accost some unknown chick and tell him to get him a fucking drink. Grab her by the arm and, when she tells him to let go, become verbally abusive. “What makes the situation worse, Captain, is that the person he accosted was not just any passing young hotty but a Marine officer. He did not know that at the time; the Marine officer was dressed much like other women in the compartment. However, he does not have the right to grab any woman in my care by the fucking arm and order them to get him a fucking drink, Captain! Then, to make matters worse, following the incident, Captain, you spent the entire fucking evening getting drunk with a fucktard who had physically and verbally assaulted a female Marine officer! You dumbshit.” “Sir, I… ” Wilkes said, paling. “And not just any Marine officer, oh, no,” Steve said. “Forget that it was the daughter of the Acting LANTFLEET. Forget that it was the daughter of your fucking rating officer, you retard. I’m professional enough to overlook that. I really am. There’s personal and professional, and I do actually know the line. Except that it was, professionally, a disgraceful action on your part, Captain. But not just any Marine officer, Captain. No, this was a Marine officer that, unlike you, is fucking worshipped by your Marines, Captain. This is a Marine officer that the acting Commandant thinks only uses boats so her boots don’t get wet walking from ship to ship. This is a Marine officer who is the only fucking light in the darkness to the entire Squadron, you dumbfuck! “I’d already gotten the scuttlebutt that you were a palace prince pogue who was a cowardly disgrace to the Marine uniform, Captain. I was willing to let that slide because maybe you could run the fucking clearance from the fucking door. But you just pissed off every fucking Marine we’ve got, you idiot. You incredible dumbfuck, moron! “In case you hadn’t noticed, you are getting cold-shouldered by everyone you work with while you were brown-nosing some fucking useless POS who used to ‘be somebody.’ ‘Your’ Marines are spitting on your shadow and that includes your fucking Gunnery Sergeant! Captain, am I getting through to you? Are you even vaguely recognizing how badly you fucked up? Professionally, politically, personally?
John Ringo (To Sail a Darkling Sea (Black Tide Rising, #2))
Used by the state as fulcrum against the unacceptable non-governmental authority of the family, it is a powerful and pernicious movement indeed. For what other movement has won the right, the societal approbation, to murder at will? A feminist disposition, its spirit and politics, has become an essential requirement for those who seek to function in secular society.
G.C. Dilsaver (The Three Marks of Manhood: How to be Priest, Prophet and King of Your Family)
The status quo is unacceptable, and it is costly. Whatever money the province may feel it is losing with revenue sharing will be more than paid off by the revitalization and empowerment of Aboriginal communities. To put matters of dignity in blunt economic terms: healthier communities cost less to taxpayers.
Bob Rae (What's Happened to Politics?)
The moral panic about supposedly unpatriotic educators was driven by international war hysteria combined with agitation over the growing domestic political strength of teachers unions. In 1917 and 1918, Congress passed the Espionage and Sedition Acts, which sought to ban public speech and actions “disloyal” to the United States military and government, especially among socialists, communists, pacifists, immigrants, and other groups perceived as affiliated with European leftism. More than any other force, the American Legion, a veterans’ organization, pushed this ethos of unquestioning patriotism onto the nation’s public schools. The Legion was influential: 16 U.S. senators and 130 congressmen identified as members. It promoted the idea that the Communist Party in Moscow actively recruited American teachers in order to enlist them in brainwashing the nation’s youth. The Legion saw all left-of-center political activity as unacceptably anti-American.
Dana Goldstein (The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession)
Fuzzy and ideological definitions of terrorism just make it easier to kill people. When you know your actions will kill innocent noncombatants, that’s terrorism. And it must be clearly named as unacceptable—no matter who does it (individuals, groups, or states), whatever the weapons, the expressed intentions, or political justifications.
Jim Wallis (God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It)
Soon after [George Yeo] became a politician, he made a famous speech, and for the first time, the term "OB markers" was used in political discourse. He was using golfing language to vividly make the point that Singapore needed OB markers to demarcate areas of public life that should remain out of bounds to social activism and the media. Otherwise, society paid an unacceptably high price. His essential point was that Singaporeans worked better if the cover of the banyan tree did not remain so broad. He was signalling that the state should pull back and give the people more free play.
Cheong Yip Seng (OB Markers: My Straits Times Story)
The Independent rants, “Not voting isn’t clever or brave. It is, in effect, saying to everyone else ‘you decide’.” Not voting is not only clever and brave, it’s the only rational way forward. You are thereby deciding the way forward. If there is a total boycott of the democratic front office of capitalism, it will remove the political legitimacy of the banking corporatocracy that rules over us. Democratic politicians are the plastic smile of the unacceptable face of capitalism. They are enemies of the people. Who in their right mind would vote for their enemies?
Mike Hockney (The Mathmos (The God Series Book 15))
Kennan recognized this fact as well, when he said: "Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.
Dan Kovalik
She smiled at Michael. “If you thought international politics were difficult to navigate, interstellar politics not only deal with different languages and cultures, but different biology. The ambassador from Mebsuta System is physiologically similar to a sea anemone; his mouth is also his anus, and they do not consider public defecation to be socially unacceptable. It can sometimes be unsettling for other cultures, like ours, to interact with his species.” “I imagine so,” Michael said, his eyes wide.
Valmore Daniels (The Interstellar Age: The Complete Trilogy)
One variant of what I have been calling the "standard view" is the "safety-valve theory." The claim is sometimes made that women's emotional caregiving does more than secure psychological benefits to individual men: This caregiving is said to shore up the patriarchal system as a whole by helping to stabilize the characteristic institutions of contemporary patriarchal society. These institutions, it is claimed, are marked by hierarchy, hence by unequal access to power, and by impersonality, alienated labor, and abstract instrumental rationality. Now men pay a heavy price for their participation in such a system, even though the system as such allows men generally to exercise more power than women generally. The disclosure of a person's deepest feelings is dangerous under conditions of competition and impersonality: A man runs the risk of displaying fear or vulnerability if he says too much. Hence, men must sacrifice the possibility of frank and intimate ties with one another; they must abandon the possibility of emotional release in one another's company. Instead, they must appear tough, controlled, and self sufficient, in command at all times. Now, so the argument goes, the emotional price men pay for participation in this system would be unacceptable high, were women not there to lower it. Women are largely excluded from the arenas wherein men struggle for prestige; because of this and by virtue of our socialization into patterns of nurturance, women are well situated to repair the emotional damage men inflict on one another. Women's caregiving is said to function as a "safety valve" that allows the release of emotional tensions generated by a fundamentally inhuman system. Without such release, these tensions might explode the set of economic and political relationships wherein they are now uneasily contained. Hence, women are importantly involved in preventing the destabilization of a system in which some men oppress other men and men generally oppress women generally.
Boston Women's Health Book Collective
One variant of what I have been calling the "standard view" is the "safety-valve theory." The claim is sometimes made that women's emotional caregiving does more than secure psychological benefits to individual men: This caregiving is said to shore up the patriarchal system as a whole by helping to stabilize the characteristic institutions of contemporary patriarchal society. These institutions, it is claimed, are marked by hierarchy, hence by unequal access to power, and by impersonality, alienated labor, and abstract instrumental rationality. Now men pay a heavy price for their participation in such a system, even though the system as such allows men generally to exercise more power than women generally. The disclosure of a person's deepest feelings is dangerous under conditions of competition and impersonality: A man runs the risk of displaying fear or vulnerability if he says too much. Hence, men must sacrifice the possibility of frank and intimate ties with one another; they must abandon the possibility of emotional release in one another's company. Instead, they must appear tough, controlled, and self sufficient, in command at all times. Now, so the argument goes, the emotional price men pay for participation in this system would be unacceptable high, were women not there to lower it. Women are largely excluded from the arenas wherein men struggle for prestige; because of this and by virtue of our socialization into patterns of nurturance, women are well situated to repair the emotional damage men inflict on one another. Women's caregiving is said to function as a "safety valve" that allows the release of emotional tensions generated by a fundamentally inhuman system. Without such release, these tensions might explode the set of economic and political relationships wherein they are now uneasily contained. Hence, women are importantly involved in preventing the destabilization of a system in which some men oppress other men and men generally oppress women generally.
Sandra Bartky Lee
In Guatemala, in 1954, a legally elected government was overthrown by an invasion force of mercenaries trained by the CIA at military bases in Honduras and Nicaragua and supported by four American fighter planes flown by American pilots. The invasion put into power Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, who had at one time received military training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The government that the United States overthrew was the most democratic Guatemala had ever had. The President, Jacobo Arbenz, was a left-of-center Socialist; four of the fifty-six seats in the Congress were held by Communists. What was most unsettling to American business interests was that Arbenz had expropriated 234,000 acres of land owned by United Fruit, offering compensation that United Fruit called "unacceptable." Armas, in power, gave the land back to United Fruit, abolished the tax on interest and dividends to foreign investors, eliminated the secret ballot, and jailed thousands of political critics.
Howard Zinn (A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present)
At the same time, the phenomenological experience of confronting these performers always testifies to the extent to which people relentlessly exceed the categories under which they have been recruited. Using amateurs is essential in this regard, for it ensures that delegated performance will never assume the seamless character of professional acting, and keeps open a space of risk and ambiguity. That this amateurism nevertheless provokes a sense of moral outrage betrays the extent to which institutional perversion has been internalised as fully normal, while that of the artists comes across as unacceptable. The logic is one of fetishistic disavowal: I know that soci- ety is all-exploiting, but all the same, I want artists to be an exception to this rule. When artists make the patterns of institutional subordination that we undergo every day both visible and available for experiential pleasure, the result is a moral queasiness; and yet the possibility of this also being a source of jouissance and a ‘tool’ is precisely the point of Klossowski’s disturbing analysis. What becomes thinkable if the pleasure of reification in these works of art is precisely analogous to the pleasure we all take in our own self-exploitation?
Claire Bishop (Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship)
What is needed today is precisely a collective response rather than an individual one. Or better yet, thinking Kant with Nietzsche, what is required in our struggle against racism is a “public use of ressentiment,” a life-affirming ressentiment in the service of anti-racism. Such ressentiment, staged as the uncompromising feeling for racial justice against the backdrop of left-liberal reformists (who promote the fantasy of action), becomes, most importantly, a collective moral feeling and consciousness, based on a shared but unacceptable condition of exclusion. In actively circumventing their particularity, society’s marginalized and racialized figures, as the “part of no-part,” can come to participate effectively in the collective emancipatory struggle for the universal—for a politics of ressentiment is universal or it is not.
Zahi Zalloua (Žižek on Race: Toward an Anti-Racist Future)
Against exploitation of human and nonhuman life, the Exodus story’s earthly and earthy focus—the rootedness of home in the earth—signifies that political liberation without ecological liberation is not only insufficient but also deficient and ultimately unacceptable.
Kenneth N Ngwa (Let My People Live: An African Reading of Exodus)
heard stories of political violence that sent chills down my spine. One guy nostalgically recalled how he crippled a man he considered a “Nazi,” first beating him into submission and then jumping on his spine, all based on unacceptable opinions the man had shared at a bar. A law student working his way up the Democratic Party told me that periodic beatings of opponents to spread fear in the population were key to any political victory. I tried to talk him out of it, tried to say the entire point of democracy was to have a nonviolent way to transfer power, but he just kept smiling and reminding me that he was already actively organizing campaigns and his candidates always won.
Ben Hamilton (Sorry Guys, We Stormed the Capitol: The Preposterous, True Story of January 6th and the Mob That Chased Congress From the Capitol. Told in Their Own Words. (The Chasing History Project #1))
Eugene couldn’t comprehend how his brothers and sisters in faith could support (and with fervor) someone who displayed such lack of self-control, such meanness. He was a man who exhibited the kind of character and morality that in every previous election exemplified exactly what the religious right denounced as absolutely unacceptable, no matter one’s politics. But now, rather than denouncing him, these same groups were championing the man who would become president.
Winn Collier (A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message)
I started to see how, perhaps, my parents weren’t really in a debate about politics at all but were defending aspects of themselves that they felt were unaccepted by the other.
Gareth Gwyn (You Are Us: How to Build Bridges in a Polarized World)
Revolution never happens because it is acceptable, it happens because everything else turns unacceptable. World War 3 has already begun, but unlike the previous times, it is not a war amongst nations, rather it's a war within nations between the forces of inclusion and reason, and the forces of separatism and superstition. And this World War will continue much longer than the previous two times, for this time, it's a war against the elements of inhumanity within our society, within ourselves, which unlike the previous times, cannot be treated by simply shooting down. Guns kill segregationists, not segregation. So this time, and now on, the revolution and all the future revolutions must continue without resorting to violence. I am not talking about simply nonviolence, I am talking about having an actual and utter repulsiveness towards violence. This is the fundamental requirement of a civilized revolution. Show strength through your resolve, not through the eagerness for violence. If a terrorist has a gun to your head, don't fight, stare down at them till they drop the gun (metaphorically speaking).
Abhijit Naskar (Heart Force One: Need No Gun to Defend Society)
And he said explicitly: “We understand that not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” Not an inch eastward. The United States gave “categorical assurances” on that point, said Jack Matlock, the American ambassador in Moscow under Reagan and Bush. Gorbachev heard them clearly, and he heard them repeatedly. He responded: “Any extension of the zone of NATO is unacceptable.” He trusted but did not verify: he never got America’s assurances in writing.
Tim Weiner (The Folly and the Glory: America, Russia, and Political Warfare 1945–2020)
Euphemisms hide, erase, coat. Euphemisms lead us to tolerate the unacceptable. And, eventually, to forget. Against a euphemism, remembrance. In order to not repeat. Remember terms and meanings. Their absurd disjointedness. Term: Our Peculiar Institution. Meaning: slavery. (Epitome of all euphemisms.) Term: Removal. Meaning: expulsion and dispossession of people from their land. Term: Placing out. Meaning: expulsion of abandoned children from the East Coast. Term: Relocation. Meaning: confining people in reservations. Term: Reservations. Meaning: a wasteland, a sentence to perpetual poverty. Term: Removal. Meaning: expulsion of people seeking refuge. Term: Undocumented. Meaning: people who will be removed.
Valeria Luiselli (Lost Children Archive)
Revolution never happens because it is acceptable, it happens because everything else turns unacceptable.
Abhijit Naskar (Heart Force One: Need No Gun to Defend Society)
but previously part of Germany. As Paul Levy, who was then Head of Information and who actually drew up the final design, explains: ‘The Germans were against fifteen because that would suggest a politically independent entity. They proposed fourteen. That was unacceptable to the Saarland. The French proposed thirteen, an Italian said, “Yes, but thirteen is unlucky.” So they adopted twelve to be symbolic of everyone.
Tim Marshall (Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags)
in the higher stages of denial, ever-more-complex mechanisms are developed for explaining the unacceptable while maintaining a façade of social and moral normality.
Alex de Waal (AIDS and Power: Why There Is No Political Crisis – Yet (African Arguments))
The danger of wokeism lies in its propensity to label dissent as heresy, leading to the cancellation of individuals for expressing opinions deemed 'unacceptable.' In a society that values free speech, the act of canceling someone for their viewpoint, even when expressed through comedy, is a troubling trend. Comedy has historically served as a powerful tool for social commentary and dissent, and stifling it under the guise of political correctness erodes the foundations of a vibrant, free-thinking culture. True progress is achieved through dialogue, not through the suppression of voices, even those cloaked in humor.
James William Steven Parker
But as each theorist offers us a new redescription of the unacceptable — of what we are suffering from, of what we have to fear — they become, by the same token, the masters of our suffering. By punctuating our unhappiness, they make it legible. Like religious or political leaders, they tell us persuasive stories about where the misery comes from, and hence, by implication, what we might do about it. They want to change our (and their) relationship to the fear they have formulated for us. The expert constructs the terror, and then the terror makes the expert. If you are part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Experts, in other words, can give us descriptions that allow us to be unhappy in new ways.
Adam Phillips (Terrors and Experts)
A functioning political party will include different views and the diversity of those opinions can be a great strength. But there will be lines that cannot be crossed and still maintain the support of the party. Calling rape “inconvenient” should be unacceptable for any candidate in any party. But if your candidacy is funded by a single deep-pocket donor who supports your positions, all the guardrails are removed.
Stuart Stevens (The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy)
Left anticommunists find any association with communist organizations morally unacceptable because of the “crimes of communism.” Yet many of them are themselves associated with the Democratic party in this country, either as voters or as members, apparently unconcerned about the morally unacceptable political crimes committed by leaders of that organization. Under one or another Democratic administration, 120,000 Japanese Americans were torn from their homes and livelihoods and thrown into detention camps; atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with an enormous loss of innocent life; the FBI was given authority to infiltrate political groups; the Smith Act was used to imprison leaders of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party and later on leaders of the Communist party for their political beliefs; detention camps were established to round up political dissidents in the event of a “national emergency”; during the late 1940s and 1950s, eight thousand federal workers were purged from government because of their political associations and views, with thousands more in all walks of life witchhunted out of their careers; the Neutrality Act was used to impose an embargo on the Spanish Republic that worked in favor of Franco’s fascist legions; homicidal counterinsurgency programs were initiated in various Third World countries; and the Vietnam War was pursued and escalated.
Michael Parenti (Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism)
Hate speech can emotionally demoralize other individuals the way he or she intentionally constructs his or her speech. The person must realize that racism is completely unacceptable and should not get considered as joke in daily life communications.
Saaif Alam
Disapproval always depends on other people - dead people, foreigners - doing the unacceptable action.
Jenny Diski (Skating to Antarctica)
Beatrix kept pace easily with Christopher as they headed toward the forest. It nagged at him to have someone else holding Albert’s leash. Beatrix’s assertiveness was like a pebble lodged in the toe of his shoe. And yet when she was near, it was impossible to feel detached from his surroundings. She had a knack of keeping him anchored in the present. He couldn’t stop watching how her legs and hips moved in those breeches. What was her family thinking, to allow her to dress this way? Even in private it was unacceptable. A humorless smile curved his lips as he reflected that he had at least one thing in common with Beatrix Hathaway--neither of them was in step with the rest of the world. The difference was that he wanted to be. It had been so easy for him, before the war. He had always known the right thing to do or say. Now the prospect of reentering polite society seemed rather like playing a game in which he had forgotten the rules.
Lisa Kleypas (Love in the Afternoon (The Hathaways, #5))
Lazareff believed that "a journalists first duty is to be read," but Camus felt it was to tell the truth as much as possible, with as much style as possible. Camus saw "Lazareffism" as unacceptable journalism, a mixture of political submissiveness, raw crime, and nonsense. Pia and Camus hated the spineless large-circulation press, which followed orders and catered to its readers' lower instincts.
Olivier Todd (Albert Camus: A Life)
If the cost of naming the enemy is diplomatically or politically unacceptable, then the war is not likely to go well.
George Friedman (The Next Decade: Where We've Been . . . and Where We're Going)
The feeding of a baby does provoke something far stronger than sexuality. It is a demonstration of power that is exclusively female and perhaps it is unacceptable for a woman who has claimed some of the supposedly male power to show she can have both.
Gabrielle Palmer (The Politics of Breastfeeding: When Breasts are Bad for Business)
More traditional and conformist values ultimately give way to more progressive ones. Cultures that go against that progression regress or fail (ahem . . . Japan). It’s constructive that conservatives challenge new liberal technologies and values. That’s how we test these things and separate what’s productive and acceptable from what’s nonproductive and unacceptable. It demonstrates the ultimate principle of cycles and progress: the play of opposites. Like male and female, boom and bust, inflation and deflation, liberals and conservatives aren’t right or wrong. They are yin and yang. Inseparable. Together, they create the energy and innovation necessary for real life to function and evolve, just as opposite poles create energy in a battery. This dynamic has created the differences and comparative advantages in our global culture today . . . the very ones the world’s citizens are revolting against. And as this revolution runs its course, we’ll ultimately move back toward globalizing . . . to our mutual advantage and pain. The backlash against globalization is necessary at this extreme point, and it will take decades to work out. But it’s not the ultimate result. It’s just the pause that refreshes.
Harry S. Dent (Zero Hour: Turn the Greatest Political and Financial Upheaval in Modern History to Your Advantage)
Here are some examples of behaviors that show integrity: -Follow all rules that are set for you and the ones you are expecting your team to follow -Follow through on promises -If you can't follow through on a commitment, let the person know why -Own and admit mistakes -Address sub-par performance in a timely manner (in yourself and others) -Recognize outstanding behavior in a timely manner -Hold all employees to the same standards -Treat everyone fairly, with a high level of respect -Communicate in a clear and respectful manner -Do not gossip or spread rumors--stop them if you hear them -Never place blame on others for something you did -Keep confidential information confidential--do not betray someone's trust -Deal with problems head-on--avoid trying to circumvent or using back channels -Be an advocate for respectful communication and treatment and address unacceptable behavior immediately -Provide facts--do not speculate without all of the information -Be a team player -Avoid getting dragged into company politics -Speak well about your co-workers and company and if you have concrete concerns, address through proper channels
Matt Heller (All Clear: A Practical Guide for First Time Leaders and the People who Support Them)
This enemy seems to be on many counts a projection of the self: both the ideal and the unacceptable aspects of the self are attributed to him. A fundamental paradox of the paranoid style is the imitation of the enemy. The enemy, for example, may be the cosmopolitan intellectual, but the paranoid will outdo him in the apparatus of scholarship, even of pedantry. Senator McCarthy, with his heavily documented tracts and his show of information, Mr. Welch with his accumulations of irresistible evidence, John Robison with his laborious study of documents in a language he but poorly used, the anti-Masons with their endlessly painstaking discussions of Masonic ritual—all these offer a kind of implicit compliment to their opponents. Secret organizations set up to combat secret organizations give the same flattery. The Ku Klux Klan imitated Catholicism to the point of donning priestly vestments, developing an elaborate ritual and an equally elaborate hierarchy. The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation through “front” groups, and preaches a ruthless prosecution of the ideological war along lines very similar to those it finds in the Communist enemy. Spokesmen of the various Christian anti-Communist “crusades” openly express their admiration for the dedication, discipline, and strategic ingenuity the Communist cause calls forth.
Richard Hofstadter (The Paranoid Style in American Politics)
The world's political diplomacy is such a coach that the White House is its chief driver; Kremlin is its head conductor, with sub-conductors and Geneva is its ticket office, with the sub-offices; the rest are the passengers. Surprisingly, one of that, South Korea bravely challenges it as an unacceptable monopoly; consequently, the world breathes in a panic and fear.
Ehsan Sehgal
Migrants are not seen as entitled like others to participate in the life of society, and it is forgotten that they possess the same intrinsic dignity as any person. Hence they ought to be “agents in their own redemption.”41 No one will ever openly deny that they are human beings, yet in practice, by our decisions and the way we treat them, we can show that we consider them less worthy, less important, less human. For Christians, this way of thinking and acting is unacceptable, since it sets certain political preferences above deep convictions of our faith: the inalienable dignity of each human person regardless of origin, race, or religion, and the supreme law of fraternal love.
Pope Francis (Fratelli Tutti: On Fraternity and Social Friendship)
To truly understand the US's policies, we need look no further than the US's own post-WW II policy statements, as well-articulated by George Kennan, serving as the State Department's Director of Policy Planning, in 1948: "{W}e have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3 of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security....We need no deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction.... In the face of this situation we would be better off to...cease to talk about vague- and for the Far East- unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better." And the US's "straight power" plays since WW II have succeeded in allowing itself, with only 5% of the world's population, to monopolize about 25% of its resources. In other words, far from advancing the "lofty" and "benign" goals of freedom and democracy, as the New York Times's editorial would have us believe, the US has been waging war around the globe to protect its own unjust share of resources. However, the US has needed the perceived threat of the USSR, or other like enemy, to justify this. Keenan recognized this fact as well, when he said: "Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.".
Dan Kovalik (The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Russia)
Marcus had pushed Gabi on her knees. Kim stared at him. This wasn’t the ever so polite Southerner she’d stayed with. His blue eyes were icy as he told Gabi her diversion had caused his beer to get warm, and that was simply unacceptable. “Your beer got warm?” Scowling up at her dom, Gabi pushed her hair out of her eyes. “God, you’re uptight. Did the aliens maybe forget to remove your anal probe?” “That does it.” He grabbed her hair and pushed her toward the cockpit. Kim grinned. The pampered doms wanted a comfortable bench to sit on to punish their subs.
Cherise Sinclair (To Command and Collar (Masters of the Shadowlands, #6))
Of course, the speed at which any society embraces these strategies will always be a product of the interplay between politics, culture, and leadership. Culture shapes a society’s political responses, and its leadership and politics, in turn, shape culture. What exactly is culture? I like this concise definition offered by BusinessDictionary.com: culture is the “pattern of responses discovered, developed, or invented during the group’s history of handling problems which arise from interactions among its members, and between them and their environment. These responses are considered the correct way to perceive, feel, think, and act, and are passed on to the new members through immersion and teaching. Culture determines what is acceptable or unacceptable, important or unimportant, right or wrong, workable or unworkable.” One
Thomas L. Friedman (Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations)
The future treaty which you are discussing has no chance of being agreed; if it was agreed it has no chance of being ratified; and if it were ratified, it would have no chance of being applied. And if it was applied, it would be totally unacceptable to Britain. You speak of agriculture which we don’t like, of power over customs, which we take exception to, and institutions, which frighten us. Monsieur le president, messieurs, au revoir et bonne chance.6
Fintan O'Toole (Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain)
Anyone familiar with party systems has seen the disgust one party member is apt to show toward another whom he may really know nothing about other than that he is one of "the enemies." He cannot afford to know much about the person, for then he risks finding some redeeming feature in his enemy, and this is unacceptable. Any redemption for the enemy is a failure for propaganda which seeks separation between individuals; communion is defeat.
Daniel Schwindt (The Case Against the Modern World: A Crash Course in Traditionalist Thought)
Predictions are precarious. Still, so firmly has the Soviet political system been wedded to the policy of a high and growing rate of investment that at least this observer of its evolution has felt tempted to conclude that no other economic policy would be easily compatible with the maintenance of the Soviet dictatorship; in other words, that a policy of rapid increases of consumer`s welfare either would remain unacceptable to the dictators or, if accepted, would in all likelihood lead to the disintegration of the dictatorship. It matters little in this connection whether future history will verify or falsify this hypothesis. It is referred to here in order to throw into relief the antagonistic nature of the allegedly classless economy in which the investment interest of the government has been continually opposed by the consumption interest of the population.
Alexander Gerschenkron (Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Belknap Press S))
Mrs. Simpson was politically and socially unacceptable as a queen consort. She was perceived as shallow, vain and hedonistic; a social climber, compelled by a desire for wealth and prestige rather than by genuine love for Edward.
Nicholas Sumner (Drake's Drum: The Peace of Amiens)
The world's political diplomacy is such a coach that the White House is its chief driver; Kremlin is its head conductor, with sub-conductors and Geneva is its ticket office, with the sub-offices; the rest are the passengers. Surprisingly, one of it, South Korea bravely challenges that, as an unacceptable monopoly; consequently, the world breathes in a panic and fear.
Ehsan Sehgal
Grace helps us make difficult conversations less difficult by tapping into the larger shared mystery of human experience. That’s all it is. We aren’t required to lose ourselves or abandon reason in the process. We don’t have to accept the unacceptable in order to maintain our grace. Grace simply means that all people are valuable. It does not mean that all opinions are valid. Grace does not mandate that we treat all sides of an issue as equally meritorious.
Sarah Stewart Holland (I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations)