Multi-Broken-Lingual Society, LBJ under Strain

The way people talk here really annoys me. Sitting at a fast-food joint with a coffee for reading, I hear phrases like, “just now…,” “last time…” or “he is naughty.” Build up your vocabulary and improve your pronunciation and syntax! Language proficiency of people of this country is fucking shit. They seem inadequate and all broken in any language.

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Graham Greene quotations;
“It sometimes seemed to [Scobie] that all he could share with them was his despair.”
“In our hearts there is a ruthless dictator, ready to contemplate the misery of a thousand strangers if it will ensure the happiness of the few we love.”
“Life always repeated the same pattern; there was always, sooner or later, bad new to be broken, comforting lies to be uttered, pink gin to be consumed to keep misery away.”
“Being unhappy together makes one love.”
And…
“People who like quotations love meaningless generalizations.”

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The President somberly anticipated the devastation if not the result. Joe Califano noticed that Johnson gave up alcohol from the moment he unleashed the bombers again. Johnson also severely curtailed the use of his clandestine telephone recording system, as though he had preserved all the history he wanted to make. (p. 435, “At Canaan’s Edge”)

Even I can imagine the tremendous pressure LBJ was under from the civil rights movement and Vietnam. This mercurial man was under great strain. Especially, the mess in Vietnam was not his creation; he inherited it from Eisenhower and JFK.