Word: bravados
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Gangsterism is not new to Japan (it actually dates back to the 16th century when unemployed samurai turned to banditry, organizing into small gangs in the process). But the mob's bravado is a novelty. Until fairly recently, in fact, gangsters were obliged by a chivalric code to give to the poor and avoid harming innocent people. Like members of the Mafia, they took a blood oath that was not broken with impunity. For failing to live up to the yakuza code, an offender had to show penitence by cutting off his little finger and presenting...
...Barbara Bel Geddes) that he is falling in love with a nubile student. Being the rare wife who is the first to know does not prevent Katy from being cataclysmically shaken by her husband's startling don't-kiss-but-tell confession. Bel Geddes beautifully conveys outward bravado and inner terror...
...North, the I.R.A. bravado took on a more fatal form, to others. At the sleepy border village of Belleek, a rocket hurtled through a thick steel-encased window of the local police station, killing a 55-year-old police constable, the father of six children. Across Ulster, 17 similar rockets were fired, though they caused no more fatalities. The weapons were identified as RPG-7 rocket launchers, a more sophisticated and modern version of the World War II bazooka; they are commonly manufactured in Communist countries and used by many Russian allies...
...ailing Douglas MacArthur and the old general had told him never to get involved in a war on mainland Asia. Kennedy bleated and complained about the news stories out of Viet Nam that ran counter to the cheery calculations of Robert McNamara's Pentagon computers and the bravado of the generals. But he was always tugged by reason and maybe, just maybe, had he lived to face the crunch he might have overwhelmed his gut, which said fight, and gone by his head, which suggested that Communists were not as bad as they used to be and, besides, wars...
Then, too, there is the reassuring presence of like-minded House members, notably "Pete" McCloskey. McCloskey, more than anyone except Riegle, is a major reference point in O Congress. With unwarranted bravado, McCloskey took his crusade against President Nixon to New Hampshire, hoping to duplicate the now mythic McCarthy venture of 1968. But the McCloskey high horse, saddled with an apathetic electorate and an empty purse, pulled up lame at the polls, dumping not Nixon but McCloskey instead. The book ends with Riegle, McCloskey, and Harvard's own Chuck Daly administering it a broken hearted coup de grace...