Word: cynic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...then again, cynic, you might leave laughing...
...acquaintance Richard provides the cynic's stereotype of an inevitably cold and ambitious road to success, it is Nixon himself who becomes a target for the blame. Mee doesn't claim that Nixon personally brought down the republic, of course, noting that it had fallen long before, but Nixon becomes a focus of his disappointment in a string of broken presidential promises that stretch back at least through Johnson's administration...
...learning, the tyranny of the state, the stupidity of the military and the bigoted, sanctimonious zeal of the church. And ever and always, the eternal humbuggery of the English, used and overused by Shaw for comic relief and casual abuse. All of this might qualify him as a complete cynic or skeptic, except that he was a true child of the 19th century, with an ineradicable faith in the evolutionary process. Taking his text from Nietzsche - "Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman" - Shaw found his equivalent for God in what he called the Life Force...
...nonessential matters. Moreover, he suggested that the degree of independence from Moscow is less important than the basic nature of Communism. Said Kissinger: "We are entitled to certain skepticism about the sincerity of declarations of independence which coincide so precisely with electoral self-interest. One need not be a cynic to wonder at the decision of the French Communists, traditionally perhaps the most Stalinist party in Europe, to renounce the Soviet concept of dictatorship of the proletariat without a single dissenting vote among 1,700 delegates, as they did at their party congress in February 1976, when all previous party...
...future. Mathieu, the Marxist, turns to teaching the children on the farm how to listen to whale songs in a greenhouse turned-schoolroom; Marguerite, the farmer, joins with the tantrist secretary Madeleine in putting out a newsletter detailing the chemical additives in commercially-grown vegetables. Even Max, the diehard cynic, finally joins the others in their vegetable farm retreat with warm enthusiasm and comraderie...