Word: conceitedly
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Just as superpowers are doomed to coexist, every summit seems destined to produce, sooner or later, a letdown. That is because the buildup is artificial. Such meetings are, by intent, based on the conceit that relations between traditional adversaries can change profoundly for the better, that they can change quickly, and that they can change as a result of the interaction between the superleaders themselves...
Dole's main challenge now, as it has been for years, is to keep his dark side under control. Aides joke about his demeanor. Playing off Doonesbury's conceit that George Bush has an invisible "evil twin" Skippy, Dole staffers joke that their candidate has an invisible "happy" twin. Even after Dole knew he had won Iowa, he was slow to celebrate. When he finally accepted his victory, breaking into a genuine smile, Iowa voters must have got a special lift, having made this sad man happy for a moment. Before the week was out, the happy twin had again...
...great size of the baby boom generation also encouraged a sort of subliminal illusion. When time flows from father to son, from past through present into future, the generations have their orderly procession, moving vertically through time. But it was a metaphysical conceit of the baby boomers that the present expanded horizontally, into a kind of earthly eternity. "We want the world, and we want it now!" In the great collision of the generations, the young created their own world, a "counter culture" as Historian Theodore Roszak first called it, and endowed it with the significances and pseudo profundities...
...familiar conceit is that each conductor interprets a masterpiece differently, continually freshening it. That may once have been true, when there were fewer concerts than today. But airplanes, records and the 52-week season have changed the rules of the game. Works are repeated incessantly in the concert hall by the same succession of globe-trotting conductors, and the same performance can be heard repeatedly at home. Not only have certain pieces become norms but their interpretations have as well...
Summits embody a noble human conceit, one that seems particularly American: that the world's conflicts are caused by misunderstandings and mistaken perceptions. If we sit down and talk, we can clear things up. Like most noble conceits, there is some truth to it. Summitry serves to lower the world's blood pressure. The two most powerful leaders on the planet smile at each other; somehow it seems that the rumbling forces of history, filled with clashing values and national interests, might thus be tamed. And like most conceits, there is some danger: neither the President nor the public should...