Word: deflect
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that lead only to more excursions, of interruptions of prior interruptions, can render readers peevish. Ultimately, The Unconsoled suggests a considerable talent pursuing a questionable achievement. Ishiguro has created the literary equivalent of an endless bad dream: the fright engendered by impossible expectations, the frustration of feeling powerless to deflect an apparently inevitable slide toward shame and ruin. But Ryder's ordeal seems less malevolent than capricious. He is the benumbed victim of nothing more sinister than a patchy memory and a tight schedule. Why reproduce a free-floating nightmare when the real thing lurks each night for billions...
Even Reagan, who was 69 in 1980, was able to deflect the issue with a combination of shrewdness, humor and take-it-or-leave-it confidence. "Conservative Republicans never sat around and said about Reagan, 'Don't you think he's too old? It's a hard job,'" recalls a party insider. "They knew who Reagan was. They trusted Reagan to be Reagan and stay Reagan, and they thought, 'If he has a heart attack, he'll still be Reagan...
...doesn't seem to much matter whatthat result is: "We cannot expect there to be asingle stable solution...but rather a variety ofuncertain and temporary equilibria, with theconversation-stoppers tending to accrete pearlylayers of supporting dogma which cannot themselveswithstand extended scrutiny but do actually serveon occasion, blessedly, to deflect and terminateconsideration." In that list ofconversation-stoppers, utilitarian calculus andKantian imperatives are equally valid...
...lack of support from above, the atmosphere of languid unconcern that permeated the agency's executive suite. The KGB made its own contribution. From the start the KGB assumed that the CIA would look for a penetration after its agents began disappearing. Moscow therefore did everything it could to deflect the attention of the mole hunters and send them down blind alleys...
...wants the U.N. to completely eliminate the sanctions. In 1991, Iraq rejected a similar offer, complaining that it infringed on Iraq's sovereignty.TIME U.N. correspondent Bonnie Angelosays Saddam is unlikely to back down from that stance unless he is given a way to "save face." The U.N. wants to deflect criticism that Iraqi residents are suffering from the sanctions, but still refuses to lift them because itsuspects Iraq is making biological weapons...