jaimeclarke commented on a post
Ok, there are like a million posts on here commenting/complaining about how the similes are sooo over the top, etc., which I can kinda see although I love it. BUT then about halfway through I noticed one part where they say “calm as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs” and THAT one I recognized as a common Southern expression/idiom… which made me wonder how many more of these seemingly over-the-top similes are in reality actual common expressions from real Southern dialects! (I’m saying “Southern” for lack of a more specific term for what I’m trying to express, but maybe Appalachian would be more specific/suitable?) If nothing else, these similes are certainly meant to showcase that hyperbolic/poetic tone and way of speaking, and as soon as I realized that it made me appreciate the writing style that much more.
Has anyone else caught any other expressions or idioms like these while reading this book - ones that you’ve heard out and about in the real world too?
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Post from the Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II forum
“The boys of Capital, they also chortle in their martinis about the death of socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century—without exception—has either been crushed, overthrown, or invaded, or corrupted, perverted, subverted, or destabilized, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States. Not one socialist government or movement—from the Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to the FMLN in Salvador—not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home. It’s as if the Wright brothers’ first experiments with flying machines all failed because the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And then the good and god-fearing folk of the world looked upon this, took notice of the consequences, nodded their collective heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Man shall never fly.”
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Post from the Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II forum
“This has been a common phenomenon. For many of the cases described in the following pages, one can find statements of high or middle-level Washington officials which put into question the policy of intervention; which expressed misgivings based either on principle (sometimes the better side of American liberalism) or concern that the intervention would not serve any worthwhile end, might even result in disaster. I have attached little weight to such dissenting statements as, indeed, in the final analysis, did Washington decision-makers who, in controversial world situations, could be relied upon to play the anti-communist card. In presenting the interventions in this manner, I am declaring that American foreign policy is what American foreign policy does.”
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