Word: defeats
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...work his way through high school at such jobs as picking cotton and pumping gas. The Stetsoned Smith is the campaigning frontiersman who flew to 249 of Texas' 254 counties to shake hands and exude confidence. Horn rims or hat, there was more than enough Smith to defeat Republican Paul W. Eggers...
...every exultant winner in the 1968 elections, there is now at least one loser who feels the special bitterness of public rejection. He may reason that defeat is a universal experience, that life itself is a losing proposition. He may even act out the obligatory role of "good loser." But how does one become a good loser? Is there such a thing as an art of losing well...
There must be. Most of mankind's religions and philosophies are aimed at steeling humans for the ultimate loss, plus the lesser defeats that lead up to it. Most of the authenticated sages?quite a few losers among them? emphasize a very ancient idea: because the loser alone controls his attitude, he can always change that attitude and regard defeat as unimportant. "Our life," wrote Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor-philosopher, "is what our thoughts make...
Actually, there are a great many substitutes for victory in American life. Unsuccessful generals or business magnates do not hopelessly lose face, as in some Eastern cultures; they retire amid honors and stock options. Defeated politicians are not liquidated, as in totalitarian countries; they run again. In a dynamic and open society, losers are blessed with enormous opportunities to weather defeat by switching to new directions of adventures. The comeback is an especially American dream. Yet that itself only indicates a desperate need to win. Whole libraries could be filled with American novels whose villain is success, or a misunderstanding...
Indeed, a society that equates defeat with failure runs the risk of creating angry outcasts who eventually seek revenge and justification. In extremity, such explosive emotions can drive frustrated losers to the crime of "magnacide" (killing somebody big). Lee Harvey Oswald, the archetypal U.S. assassin, almost certainly murdered John F. Kennedy partly to borrow for himself the luster of a glamorous winner. The Oswalds are rare. Still, Americans do need a lot more help in coping with the problems of losing...