Word: maligned
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Adolf Hitler. Hitler's ideological war on the Soviet Union devastated Europe. After Lenin's death, his followers in Europe, Asia and Africa created other Bolshevik regimes that propagated regional wars, fostered terrorism and destroyed economies. Not until 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, was Lenin's malign influence definitively reversed. Its aftereffects will persist into the 3rd millennium. --John Keegan, historian...
...course, there are those whose intentions were malign but not all that influential, whose perniciousness petered out. Father Coughlin's anti-Semitic rants on the wireless never really amounted to much. Preacher Billy Sunday swore that when Prohibition finally came, "Hell would be rent forever." Fat chance of that happening anytime soon. George Wallace's cry of "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" lasted only a decade before it was relegated to the dustbin of ugly 19th century prejudices. Call this the When Bad People Don't Do All That Much Damage theory of history...
...Godfather's family, and a game, crippled mutt that seems to have been inspired by old Lon Chaney roles. In short, they are knowing yet desperate inventions. So is the farcical but flat rescue that Babe and Mrs. Hoggett lead when their friends are impounded by motivelessly malign city authorities. Studio executives ordered last-minute fixes on the film because they found it too dark in tone, but its inherent, insoluble problem is that in its frenzy to top the original, it has lost touch with the first film's gently whimsical spirit...
...China? The simple answer is there is no simple answer, just ambiguous facts. Like dual-use exports for civilian or military purpose, China's behavior can be benign or malign, better or not good enough. There's plenty to worry about if you're worried about China...
...shove while desire and doubt chase each other across his face, the Tramp is never unself-conscious, never free of calculation, never anything but a hard-pressed if often divinely lighthearted member of an endangered species, entitled to any means of defense he can devise. Faced with a frequently malign universe, he can never quite bring himself to choose between his pleasure in the improvisatory shifts of strategic retreat and his impulse to love some creature palpably weaker and more threatened than himself...