Word: powerlessness
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Since it was he who lost the fight, we ought to come again to the conclusion that people are powerless in the world. In reality, we believe the reverse, and it takes the act of the man in the water to remind us of our true feelings in this matter. It is not to say that everyone would have acted as he did, or as Usher, Windsor and Skutnik. Yet whatever moved these men to challenge death on behalf of their fellows is not peculiar to them. Everyone feels the possibility in himself. That is the abiding wonder...
Rising unemployment sharpens the feeling among workers--"the little guys"--that they are powerless to control their own lives. It shows people that decisions made by corporations and politicians can deprive men and women their basic right to earn livelihoods, for no apparent reason. More than anything else, the unemployed vote against incumbents to assert their dignity and their will to have a say in their own futures...
...seeking to make life under martial law as bearable as possible for the Polish people. The church is also trying to ease conditions for the detainees and to improve the arrangements for distributing relief supplies. According to Vatican sources, the Pope realizes that the church and the people are powerless against the regime's tanks and guns, and that violent resistance would only lead to a bloodbath and probably to a Soviet invasion...
...They put a shirt over my head, and they hit me with something hard. I felt the men coming over to lift off the shirt. But I was still conscious. I heard the boatmaster order another man to cut my throat. (Here Loc interjects that he was powerless to help. Pham offers no consolation...
...back, though, it is not the jolts but the symmetry of 1981 that seems most disturbing. In the United States, the gap between the privileged and the poor widened, while the Soviet boys on the bloc underlined how great the gap is between political power-holders and the politically powerless. The champions of political liberty reacted primarily on the basis of economic considerations, while the upholders of historical materialism reacted mainly on the basis of political interest. A pernicious but burgeoning sentiment in Western Europe equated the misdeeds of the two superpowers...