Word: self-destructed
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...with both sides retaining the option to "launch on warning" of an incoming attack, Obama said during the presidential campaign that the U.S. was unnecessarily exposing itself to accidental nuclear war, in the event of faulty radar alerts or computer glitches. (Long-range missiles do not have a self-destruct button and cannot be rerouted mid-flight.) While it is highly unlikely that the U.S. and Russia would ever intentionally engage in nuclear war, the NPR does nothing to carry out Obama's pledge to lessen the chance of accidental nuclear war by taking U.S. missiles off hair-trigger alert...
That sentence will self-destruct some time this month...
...Checchi, a former co-chairman of Northwest Airlines, spent $40 million losing to Gray Davis in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 1998; and the businessman Bill Simon, who campaigned unsuccessfully against Davis in 2002. All of them were seen as overconfident and underprepared, liable to self-destruct when pressed on basic policy questions. Raphael Sonenshein, a political-science professor at California State University at Fullerton, notes that self-made, first-time candidates often imagine incorrectly that politics can be made as efficient, orderly and logical as business. "While [very wealthy candidates] are usually competitive, it's not nearly as easy...
...What are the main reasons that people choose to self-destruct, killing others in the process? The key motivator for a violent actor who seeks to die like a martyr is a strong attachment to a community, usually a religious community. There are dozens of reasons for killing, but violent martyrdom is first and foremost about belonging. Strong emotional ties and strong feelings of mutual obligation often hold religious societies together...
...Jesus Christ is probably the most famous martyr in history. Why has this trend not resonated as strongly among Christians as it has among Muslims? Early Christian communities were very happy to self-destruct but after the Enlightenment there was an increasing separation between religious spheres of action and political spheres of action, whereas in Islam, religious dynamics are still very much intertwined with political agendas. In Christianity, you don't really see what you see in Islam where the [political] martyr is a Christ-like figure. In Christian communities, if you act like a Christ-like figure to solve...