Word: bludgeonings
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North Korea's propagandists rarely get to have as much fun as they do when writing the official annual New Year's editorial carried by various official news outlets. Brimming with venom and vitriol, the message typically consists primarily of blood-curdling threats to bludgeon various enemies into submission. In 2009, they wrote that the "daunting reality" North Korea faced required the "seething red blood of revolution...
...lacks the capacity to eliminate Hizballah, Hamas and the Taliban and since we are probably unable to overthrow the regimes in Syria and Iran, we need to rethink our goals. Many on the American right believe the lesson of the Reagan years is that the U.S. can bludgeon our enemies into submission if only we don't lose our will. But Ronald Reagan didn't bludgeon Mikhail Gorbachev into submission; he seduced him with intensive diplomatic engagement and arms-control agreements that thawed the Cold War. It was only after that thaw that Gorby let Eastern Europe go free. Eventually...
...bill isn't properly funded - if working-class families don't receive large enough tax credits to help pay for their newly mandated health insurance, if they're forced to pay thousands of dollars in new out-of-pocket expenses - Republicans will use "socialized" health care as a bludgeon against Democrats in 2010 and 2012. There is much talk in Washington these days about the debacle of Medicare catastrophic care, which charged senior citizens for additional services many were already paying for. It was passed in 1988, but rescinded after a public rebellion in 1989. (See 10 health-care-reform...
...established willingness to use violence against its political opponents. In Matabeleland in the mid-1980s, his army killed thousands of civilians in a campaign to bloody the opposition Zapu Party. When his ruling Zanu-PF lost the March election, the security forces and allied militia were again unleashed to bludgeon Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) into backing out of a presidential runoff vote. Yet when Zimbabweans protest, with backing by world leaders, at its government's refusal to be voted out - the normal channels of democratic process - that action has little or no effect on Mugabe's political...
...annoyance of a second-rate new publication but the giant slap in the face it offers to the idea of meritocracy. It is a depressing proof positive that neither good ideas, nor even mediocre ideas, can assure a rise to the top as effectually as the bludgeon of clichés, the gloss of marketing, and the access to money...