Word: manias
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Against these quiet fates, the author sets the civic uproar of Soviet public life, "the elaborate trumpery of our heroic age proudly proceeding across the face of the earth, clanking its medals." It is a time of hysteria, of a paranoid spy mania, and there are rumors that "cancer germs concealed in matches had been infiltrated into the country by a foreign power (you pick your teeth with a match and it's all over with you), or that, under the influence of cosmic rays, women were giving birth to girls (to the detriment of our army...
...secret U.S. intelligence estimates if the Administration denies that Soviet might has "increased considerably." (Grumped Ike to his staff: "We may have to take another look at what we give these people.") Columnist Joseph Alsop called the Eisenhower determination to preserve fiscal responsibility in Government an "obsession" and a "mania." Pundit Walter Lippmann, himself past 70, likened Ike to "a tired old man who has lost touch with the springs of our national vitality...