Word: painlessness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...federal government, he writes, it should encourage local government to reorganize by "restoring its fiscal vitality." He recommends federal revenue sharing to make urban citizenship as financially painless as possible. His answer is only a partial one. Fiscal vitality alone would not overcome the reluctance of the suburbs to associate with the central cities. Self-interest, self-satisfaction and fear would keep them detached. They wish not only to protect themselves from crime and urban poverty but also to reduce their involvement with these problems...
Strangely, this schizophrenic existence is essentially painless. Unlike the Quixote legend, illusion rarely distorts the ongoing process of reality. Similarly, reality makes no effort to cancel out the shadows of illusion. Richard Nixon's rhetoric about peace and honor frees him to fight his protracted little war, while exponentially proliferating talk of justice and the people permit us to support our tacky revolutions. As long as the two camps don't come into contact, no problem...
...bureaucratic, but rather intelligent and humane. The only hope for humane government in the future is through the extensive use of the social sciences by government (Emphasis added)." Not only are the social sciences our only hope at home, but they hold out the added virtue of constituting a painless substitute for revolution abroad. "The social sciences provide a new and better way of linking the intelligentsia (in underdeveloped countries) to their masses. The link will be made somehow with or without us. If it is made by ideological political movements, it will be made by revolutions and it will...
...make the cure as painless as possible, the paging device initially beeps as often during the day as the smoker normally lights up, but in a random pattern. The patient agrees to smoke whenever it sounds...
...digs Aristotle too. That isn't much of a punch line, but then, The Libertine isn't much of a joke. This slick little bit of Italian pornography has enough brains not to take itself seriously, but lacks the wit to make it anything more than a painless...