Word: inertias
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...last Saturday's New York Times, for example, a cursory inspection of the news section revealed several stories bearing menacing portents, directly or otherwise. These items were only connected loosely, in that they add up to one inescapable, and hardly novel, conclusion: America bloats with inertia, and as the torpor grows, rational actions dwindle. Although Fridays in July are supposed to be slow news days, a speculative reader could not help but feel bewildered after reading these seemingly disparate stories...
...signs of change, and the feminist movement has by and large collapsed into a rather bizarre disarray. Yet 100,000 people marched in Washington to show their support for women's rights, and millions more must surely realize the sensibility of sexual equality. Here is a clear case of inertia holding the upper hand...
...others. And while there is no common source of all these tragedies, they all exemplify the daily tragedy that has become America. It is a system beyond anyone's control, slowly consuming itself like a cooling star. It will continue, of course--nothing can overwhelm the combined forces of inertia and entrenchment, at least not now--and improvement seems hardly likely...
THERE ARE any number of reasons for the inertia that has seized America. There is, of course, the old "Nixon and Vietnam and inflation sapped the vitality of the '60s" line--but comparisons of the '70s to the '60s are hackneyed and generally odious. The '60s, if nothing else, were a dynamic, essential turning point, of which the '70s are the antithesis. Then there is the "lobotomization of America" argument, which points to television and pre-professionalism and People Magazine as the leading indicators of plasticity, stupidity and rampant escapism. Armchair (and journalistic) philosophers can rant forever, yet still achieve...
...obvious danger as the icy gauntlet of mountains seems to close in around us. "You want to be lined up right," Hurd explains with a smile, "or you get all bent out of shape." Translation: if the helmsman is not careful, the tanker's enormous weight and inertia will make it keep on turning long after it should have straightened out on a new course...