Word: brutalize
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...coup on an astrologically auspicious day. In South Viet Nam everybody was indeed on the move, but where they were moving was no clearer than the zodiac. The U.S. was increasingly unhappy with President Ngo Dinh Diem (Capricorn), and after what the U.S. officially called his "brutal" crackdown on the Buddhists, Washington obviously could not string along with him as if nothing had happened...
...army on its side-the U.S. formally absolved South Viet Nam's military leaders of responsibility in Nhu's sacking of the Buddhist temples. In an unusually sharp statement, Washington said that the generals were "not aware of the plans to attack the pagodas, much less the brutal manner in which they were carried out." Saigon bitterly denied the Washington statement, produced a document signed by army leaders to the effect that they had asked "the government to take the action it did." Top U.S. intelligence officials countered that army leaders had been coerced into signing the document...
...Diem government, the crackdown obviously seemed necessary to protect the regime-and enforce the law of the land-against Buddhist defiance. But it was brutal, nonetheless, and it aroused a strong new wave of sympathy for the Buddhists. It also put U.S. policy in South Viet Nam, which involves the lives and safety of 14,000 U.S. troops, into an agonizing dilemma. While often unhappy with Diem, the U.S. has proceeded on the assumption that it was safer to stick with him than risk the chaos that might surround a switch to a new, unknown and unpredictable regime...
...season. In Georgia, where college football commands violent loyalties, such charges were no less than an accusation of treason. Butts raced into court. Right behind him came Bear Bryant, who was already suing the Post for $500,000 because of an earlier article that said he taught brutal football. Bear now wanted $10 million more for having been accused of participating...
These, in brutal brevity, are the organizing ideas of a remarkable new synthesis of world history from 6000 B.C. to the present day. And the stress is on "world," for Author McNeill, chairman of the history department at the University of Chicago, comes amazingly close to getting it all in. He makes the politics of China or the religious maelstroms of India as clear and relevant as the French Revolution or any more standard topic; and he bites down hard on the grit of factual detail with repeated appeals to archaeology, economics, demography, linguistics, engineering, art history...