Word: symptom
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...ominous symptom of malaise is the growing visibility of a neofascist movement called the Fuerza Nueva (New Force). The party, led by a wealthy Madrid lawyer named Bias Piñar, 62, attracts alienated youth from some of Madrid's best families, who mix with a cadre of thugs and shadowy political operatives adept at exploiting a residual streak of nostalgia for the Franco era. Fuerza Nueva captured 350,000 votes-a mere .02%-in last year's national election. But the ultrarightists attract disproportionate attention with fiery street rallies and attacks, with iron bars and bicycle chains...
Patriotism should have higher ambitions. Columbia University Sociologist Amitai Etzioni sees the current stirrings as a fitful groping toward some kind of national unity. The most significant symptom he detects is the jump in the proportions of voters casting ballots in the primaries this year. Because of Iran and Afghanistan, says Etzioni, "we have what I call a hinge effect. All projections up to that point have to be redone. We largely put behind us the Viet Nam complex. This is the turning point in political apathy. We had a decade and a half of retreat from institutions, identity, directions...
...shirts-is its edgy meanness. Bad enough that it is calculatedly cheap. Worse is the stolid nastiness of it, the rock in the snowball, the compulsion to affront. Even re lentless candor - wounding friends or family by telling them their defects in the name of honesty-is a symptom not only of stupidity but also of unkindness and buried anger...
...market reached its high on Sept. 3, there was a gentle decline, with ups as well as downs, for several weeks. "We tend to blame the market," says Kidder Peabody Chairman Albert Gordon, 78, who then worked in corporate finance for Goldman, Sachs. "But the market was just a symptom. We were in a bad economic situation whether or not the stock market crashed...
...human craving for numbers tells a good deal about man kind. It is both sign and cause of man's long trek from the days of one, two, three, many. It can be taken as a symptom of exuberant joy in the quantity and multiplicity of things. Still, the dizzy acceptance of those truly incomprehensible figures might also be construed as a vicarious variation of the old Faustian game: the yearning to know the unknowable...