Word: dumbing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...part, this attitude reflects Bush's deeply ingrained caution about doing "something dumb," as Baker put it last week. It also suits the hard-line doubters, like NSC deputy Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Vice President Dan Quayle, who think Gorbachev is only a short-timer and the Soviet Union will never really change...
Then again, as Harry Hopkins never said, "The people are too dumb to understand...
...make a proposal with "punch." Scowcroft suggested that Bush propose deep reductions in U.S. and Soviet ground forces and combat aircraft in Europe. The President liked Scowcroft's idea but wanted to make sure the Pentagon was on board. "I just don't want to do anything militarily dumb," he said repeatedly...
...really appropriate to their story. They are also aware of how rapidly the world has spun since their protagonist was burning pianos and churning up teenage hormones. Accelerated change of that sort produces the kind of broad fundamental irony that moviemakers who take themselves seriously always love. How dumb we were. And so recently. How easy it is to encourage the audience to join in a superior snicker at simpler times, simpler souls...
...backward to avoid offending other constituencies. In Have Thine Own Way, Lord, sinners no longer ask Jesus to wash them "whiter than snow," because of objections from blacks. In Wesley's O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing, editors originally dropped a verse proclaiming the spiritual uplifting of the "dumb" and the "lame," lest the handicapped take umbrage. They later restored the words, but suggest in a footnote that the stanza may be omitted...