Word: hindsight
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MEMOIRS: 1925-1950, by George F. Kennan. During a crucial quarter-century of American-Russian relations, Diplomat Kennan was in official disfavor first for being too harsh toward the Soviets, then for being too soft; by hindsight, he was right more often than wrong...
...Burps. Simon also squarely faces a fact often obscured by sentimental hindsight: a great many bands of the era were inevitably cheap, slick or inept. He quotes Arranger Gordon Jenkins, after an evening of listening to the radio in 1937: "I heard 458 chromatic runs on accordions, 911 'telegraph ticker' brass figures, 78 sliding trombones, four sliding violas, 45 burps into a straw, 91 bands that played the same arrangement on every tune, and 11,006 imitations of Benny Goodman...
Coalition of Retreat. Nonetheless, the latest Gallup poll showed that 46% of Americans now believe by hindsight that "it was a mistake to have become involved in Viet Nam"-compared with 24% two years ago. Perhaps more significant was Gallup's reckoning that 57% of Americans believe that the U.S. should not involve itself in another situation "like Viet...
...will not and cannot be reassembled." For the U.S., the continuing problem is how to face Communism without being either fatuously optimistic about coexistence or excessively belligerent in opposition. In dealing with that problem, Kennan has often been out of step with his superiors at the State Department. By hindsight, it is evident that he was right more often than wrong...
This, of course, is a rather interesting intellectual maneuver on the part of the Administration. For it is performing the common but dangerous trick of projecting what is certainly historical hindsight into the future...