Word: idealist
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Djilas was and is an idealist, which partially explains his faulty reasoning. At first a die-hard communist, he wholeheartedly supported Tito's suppressions of civil liberties. Idealistically, he thought he and the rest of the elite knew what was best for the people. And again, when he wanted to return civil liberties to the people to bolster creativity, he didn't understand the practical realities of the era. Neither the United States nor the U.S.S.R. would allow free elections; they would have preferred to a make Yugoslavia another Latin American-type political chessboard with commensurate violence between the vying...
...rejected idealist is thus readied for the fleshy pleasures, and the stage is set for one of the author's most durable themes: libertinism and its comic consequences. Columbine matures as a perennial nymph, but she pales beside Snooky von Sickle, the brewery heiress of Wagnerian dimensions with whom Peachum shares many a back seat and shadowy glade. Yet love has its mysteries: when Peachum recalls having made unkind comments about Columbine's "doorbells," he feels a pang of remorse that is followed immediately by a twinge of desire. Peachum's entanglements are due to varying intentions...
Murton is a realistic idealist: "I don't think prison reform is attainable," he says matter-of-factly. "It's a goal we won't ever reach but we can get closer." He smiles. "We don't have Jeffersonian democracy either...
Julia feels that she has betrayed her race. A romantic idealist, she struggles to convince herself that her love for Herman is a simple emotion, uncomplicated by their racial difference. But America's history of sexual relations between white men and Black women echoes of ugly racism: Southern gentlemen--even Jefferson--enjoyed frequent midnight strolls through their slave quarters, looking for Black women to sleep with; in most cases, these country squires took no responsibility for the slave children they fathered. Julia's female neighbors have not forgotten that sexual abuse and cannot help feeling that she allows Herman...
...idealist, Carter tends to think that if a policy is right, it will somehow prevail. A proper moral stance, he seems to believe, is at least half the battle. He thus remains relatively indifferent to strategy, to making sure that all the pieces are in place and all the proper personalities consulted, that all the predictable consequences of an action indeed have been predicted. He tends to react rather than anticipate, to race from one crisis to the next, always hoping for the best. He often fails to see how one event is related to another in a binding chain...