Word: pitilessness
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What I do know is that the world is a pitiless and dangerous place. In 20 years of observing portions of it, I have seen, or seen the aftermath of, children blown apart by car bombs in Beirut; kindergartners slaughtered in a schoolroom in Israel; hunted young men dying of starvation in Sudan; other young men and women hacked to death with machetes in Rwanda, their bodies hoisted like logs over waterfalls and carried into muddy rivers; still others decapitated in Cambodia, with kids forced to do the decapitating...
...help reshape the whole death-penalty debate. The prospect of McVeigh's execution had already made every argument get up and dance. Just as capital punishment was losing support with each new innocent man freed by DNA evidence, along came the perfect villain: so clearly guilty, unrepentant and pitiless that at least 75% of Americans agreed with his sentence, including 22% who say they oppose the death penalty but would make an exception for him. The Pope had asked for mercy; most Americans didn't think McVeigh deserved...
Those who argue that the Palestinians' real problem is not Arafat but rather a pitiless Israeli government are not wrong. However, they overlook the harsh reality of the situation. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an asymmetric confrontation between the most powerful nation in the Middle East and the weakest. Any attempt to face up to Israel using violence will only bring more severe repercussions for the Palestinians--a truth to which the death toll can attest...
...been called. You promise to be a uniter, not a divider? Here is a broken, cloven polity. You promise to change the tone? We can't bear to listen anymore to the rancor of the past five weeks, or eight years, or 13, if you extend this period of pitiless politics back to the confirmation hearings of Robert Bork...
...Huxley in lieu of giving them actual thoughts. It is not rare that one encounters such grand generalities as, "He was surprised at how miserable he felt. Far removed from Christian notions of grace and redemption, unfamiliar with the concepts of freedom and compassion, Michel's worldview had grown pitiless and mechanical." Such a statement flounders in the context of a work of fiction, and unfortunately is not redeemed by any breathtaking originality...