Word: dismiss
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...character who didn't have some serious personality flaw to go along with the brainpower. No, that would threaten the average American. All those smart characters must have something wrong with them. They make the perfect kind of despicable foil--superior enough to resent, yet inferior enough to dismiss. The anti-intellectual American can rest easy...
Lastly, the staff is wrong to dismiss the concept of a "malevolent" federal government. Numerous FBI agents were reprimanded for their actions in Waco. In Idaho, a white supremacist's cabin was surrounded and his wife and son were shot because he failed to appear in court for a minor weapons violation. If fringe groups in the U.S. are paranoid, they may have frighteningly legitimate reasons...
...wackier notions, uttered by the most normal-looking people speaking in reasoned tones: Russian troops are hidden in salt mines under Detroit waiting for their orders, the U.N. has a secret plan to disarm the public with the help of L.A. gangs. What was less easy to dismiss were those Americans who realize Janet Reno is not a paid agent of Jewish Colombian drug lords but who nonetheless are so deeply alienated from their government that they view it as their enemy. Most are not violent people, and many of them have understandable grievances about feeling left behind...
...stranger. But how does a healthy distrust of government, which is the birthright of every American, turn into an unshakable conviction that the U.S. is about to be overthrown by a United Nations force made up of Hong Kong police and Russian troops? It is tempting to dismiss people with such paranoid beliefs as sick, demented individuals. But that doesn't explain the widespread membership in the U.S. in militias and other extremist groups. Experts in psychology and group behavior warn that anyone can fall prey to paranoia-given the right combination of peer pressure and repeated exposure...
While our efforts to save South Vietnam proved vain in the end, we should not dismiss the role the Vietnam conflict played in our ultimate victory in the Cold War. Our intervention in Vietnam held back the forces of Communism long enough so that other Southeast Asian nations, such as Thailand and Malaysia, were able to strengthen themselves and thereby never succumb to communist aggression. The Vietnam War, though a defeat, helped stem the tide of Communism in Southeast Asia and therefore contributed to our victory in the Cold War. McNamara's mistake lay not in fighting the Vietnam...