Europe s Dangerous Banalities

But, all too often, clichés become established because they are true.

A cliché has been heard throughout the Syrian crisis Syria is not Libya.

On this foundation of zombie economics and slipshod research rests the case for austerity.

The younger generation feels stifled by their elders stale, protectionist policies.

In fact, Putin has nothing to offer Russians aside from his own vulgar, hackneyed rhetoric.

(e) Permits or regulations for waste water discharges issued by the competent authority or appropriate body.

Regardless of what happens, all Europe needs to get past clichés about old versus new Europe.

Even when China s voice could be decisive in resolving crises or preventing bloodshed, instead of acting, its diplomats repeat the old platitudes about non interference.

Traditional versus modern, urban versus rural, intellectuals versus the peasantry these divisions are the stuff of political cliché.

Or is the explanation for Israel s current predicament to be found on the more prosaic terrain of the country s dysfunctional democracy?

We must jettison populist democracy and embrace what democracy has always stood for the engagement of all citizens in running their government.

But perhaps if Arab armed forces were required to face up to that reality, it might change some of the overblown rhetoric about other unintended casualties in other wars.

For far different reasons, the US, and the entire world, seems condemned to simplification of thought, action, and feeling in the service of immediate, quotidian efficiency.

It seemed an odd and to many offensive transition from King s great plea for civil rights to Palin s sentimental clichés about the military.

But another analogy may be more suitable. Syria may well become a second Iraq, not by design but as an unintended consequence of current policy.

On this foundation of zombie economics and slipshod research rests the case for austerity. In fact, the austerity boosters in the UK and Europe frequently cited the Alesina and Reinhart Rogoff findings.

If so, it is not the game itself that they have forsaken, but rather the kind of game that football has become a billion dollar business, a prestige object for louche plutocrats, and an extravagant showpiece for corrupt governments and international sporting organizations.

I spent most of the '80s being quite solemn, turning out these sorts of designs that I was expected to do because that's who I was, and I was living in this cycle of going from serious to solemn to hackneyed to dead, and getting rediscovered all over again.

Why Putin s advisors and public relations managers encourage him to make these banal triumphalist announcements is difficult to fathom unless one comprehends the sense of grievance that almost all Russians feel at the loss of Great Power status.