Word: americanizing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...this has been conceived, directed, and largely financed by one man: Daniel Keith Ludwig; 82, the secretive shipowner and industrialist whose estimated net worth of $3 billion or more makes him the richest American. Tough-minded and intensely shy, Ludwig is sole owner of his enterprises and thus must answer to no one. Operating from offices in Manhattan's Burlington House, he runs a maze of companies (he has 19 in Brazil alone). His flagship firm, National Bulk Carriers, operates one of the world's largest private fleets of huge supertankers and cargo ships. He is also proprietor...
...operation as a one-man show, Ludwig has even refused Brazilian tax credits that could have saved him roughly 50% of his own investment. However, since the next stage will cost $650 million to $750 million and perhaps much more, he is seeking to line up credit from American and European financial institutions...
...unbelievable, she and Starbuck had been Communists in their youth. His zeal has withered with age, but not hers. "After I die," she tells Starbuck, "you look in my left shoe . . . You will find my will in there. I leave the RAMJAC Corporation to its rightful owners, the American people." Starbuck is dazzled by the purity of her motive but convinced that her act will make not one whit of difference to the way people live: "The economy is a thoughtless weather system - and nothing more. Some joke on the people, to give them such a thing...
...partly the spectacle of Western decadence that aroused the Ayatullah Khomeini to orgies of Koranic proscription. Alcohol, music, dancing, mixed bathing all have been curtailed by the Iranian revolution. Americans find this zealotry sinister, but also quaint: How can almost childish pleasures (a tune on the radio, a day at the beach) deserve such puritanical hellfires? But Americans are also capable of a small chill of apprehension, a barely acknowledged thought about the prices that civilizations pay for their bad habits: If Iran has driven out its (presumably polluted) monarch and given itself over to a purification that demands even...
...very idea of decadence, with all its fleshly titillations and metaphysical phosphorescence, excites that kind of Spenglerian anxiety. A lot of Americans seem inclined to think of themselves as a decadent people: such self-accusation may be the reverse side of the old American self-congratulation. Americans contemplate some of the more disgusting uses to which freedom of expression has been put; they confront a physical violence and spiritual heedlessness that makes them wonder if the entire society is on a steep and terminal incline downward. They see around them what they call decadence. But is the U.S. decadent? Does...