Word: tyrants
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...past vs. Gorbachev's vigorous, risky plunge into the future. Gorbachev is a hero for what he would not do -- in fact, could not do, without tearing out the moral wiring of his ambitions for the future. In that sense, as in so many others, the fallen Rumanian tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu played the archvillain...
Bush has been hailed for his restraint in the troubles besetting the Soviet Union, China, Poland, Hungary and, earlier, Panama. But there has always lurked the probability that sooner rather than later, U.S. muscle would be needed to subdue a tyrant. In the minds of many, a doubt has lingered from last year's presidential campaign over whether Bush had the heart to use power. The explanations of inaction from his Secretaries of State and Defense and his White House staff have echoes of almost every sad incident of our times, going back to Pearl Harbor. Bush's caution will...
This is nostalgia with the blinkers off. It understands that in family life everything is complicated, even a grown child's hatred for the ogre who sired him. The father here (Pete Postlethwaite) is a man capable of tenderness but more comfortable as the patriarchal tyrant. He refuses to share a drink with his son (Dean Williams) or a farewell with his daughter Eileen (Angela Walsh). He beats daughter Maisie (Lorraine Ashbourne) for wanting to go to a dance, and flogs his wife (Freda Dowie), stifling even her sobs with barked threats to "Shut up!" It is a brutality...
Take Ghostbusters II, for example. Once again the psychomagnotheric slime is flowing in Manhattan. Once again spooks are aloft among the other pollutants in its atmosphere. Once again paranormal phenomena (this time in the service of Vigo, a sometime Carpathian tyrant, whose spirit inhabits an antique portrait) have singled out Dana (Sigourney Weaver) for special attention. Once again the old team of exorcists -- wisecracking Venkman (Bill Murray), absentminded Egon (Harold Ramis), earnest Ray (Dan Aykroyd) and stouthearted Winston (Ernie Hudson) -- is ready to deploy its pseudo science in the service of exorcism...
...Anatoli Rybakov's groundbreaking novel about Stalinist- era repression, Children of the Arbat. When Stalin stepped forward to deliver his monologue, a chilling silence enveloped the auditorium of the Lunacharsky Dramatic Theater. "It takes great cruelty to tap the great energy of a backward people," declaimed the provincial tyrant. "A dictator is great who can inspire love for himself through terror...