Word: awed
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...requisite: "Tunnel vision helps. Being a bit of a s___ helps. A thick skin helps. Stamina is crucial, as is a capacity to work so hard that your best friends mock you, your lovers despair and the rest of your acquaintances watch furtively from the sidelines, half in awe and half in contempt." Whatever you do, don't become a wage slave, writes Dennis. "The salary begins to have an attraction and addictiveness all of its own. A regular paycheck and crack cocaine have that in common...
...States. On the whole, he didn't think there was much. For one thing, he was troubled by the way Americans appeared to lack any capacity for reverence toward superior men. "If there be a discipline in which the Americans are wanting," he pronounced, "it is the discipline of awe and respect." And in that connection, one institution of American life struck him as an especially bad idea. That was what he called "the addiction to 'the funny man,' who is a national misfortune there...
...because it includes the single best one-line defense not just of himself but also of how a democratic society works in the first place. "A discriminating irreverence," he wrote, "is the creator and protector of human liberty." This would be the polite way of saying "Go stuff your awe...
...sense, Arnold was right: the funnyman was a national phenomenon. And still is. But it was no misfortune. Reverence and awe aren't democratic virtues. The last thing you need in a free society is people who know their place. Twain knew that. It's one reason we know his place--and it's up there very high...
Human beings are not wired to look at things this way. We're suckers for size, for flash, for speed, for scale; we mistake immensity for complexity and subtlety for simplicity. That has very often been our undoing. Shock and awe should win a war, until an insurgency beats it back. An election should be sealed by storming Super Tuesday, until the campaign dies of a thousand little losses. The 2003 Yankees, with their $180 million payroll, should win the World Series, until the $63 million Marlins send them packing...