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Armchair Warrior
Armchair warrior is a pejorative term that alludes to verbally fighting from the comfort of one's living room. It describes activities such as speaking out in support of a war, battle, or fight by someone with little or no military experience. Typical "armchair warrior" activities include advocating sending troops to settle a conflict, lobbying to keep defense jobs to make outdated military equipment as part of the military-industrial complex, or to make political messages on radio or television talk shows in favor, or using armed forces in a conflict over trying diplomatic channels. An early example of the term "armchair warrior" appeared in the 1963 '' Twilight Zone'' episode ''No Time Like the Past'', in which a time traveler to the late 1800s uses the term in a speech directed towards a banker who is calling for sending young soldiers to fight a war against American Indians. The show's director, Rod Serling, had received a Purple Heart for injuries incurred while serving a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Living Room
In Western architecture, a living room, also called a lounge room (Australian English), lounge (British English), sitting room (British English), or drawing room, is a room for relaxing and socializing in a residential house or apartment. Such a room is sometimes called a front room when it is near the main entrance at the front of the house. In large, formal homes, a sitting room is often a small private living area adjacent to a bedroom, such as the Queens' Sitting Room and the Lincoln Sitting Room of the White House. In the late 19th or early 20th century, Edward Bok advocated using the term ''living room'' for the room then commonly called a '' parlo '' or ''drawing room'', and is sometimes erroneously credited with inventing the term. It is now a term used more frequently when referring to a space to relax and unwind within a household. Within different parts of the world, living rooms are designed differently and evolving, but all share the same purpose, to gather users ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The north was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist states, while the south was United States in the Vietnam War, supported by the United States and other anti-communism, anti-communist Free World Military Forces, allies. The war is widely considered to be a Cold War-era proxy war. It lasted almost 20 years, with direct U.S. involvement ending in 1973. The conflict also spilled over into neighboring states, exacerbating the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which ended with all three countries becoming communist states by 1975. After the French 1954 Geneva Conference, military withdrawal from Indochina in 1954 – following their defeat in the First Indochina War – the Viet Minh to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slacktivism
Slacktivism (a portmanteau of ''slacker'' and ''activism'') is the practice of supporting a political or social cause by means such as social media or online petitions, characterized as involving very little effort or commitment. Additional forms of slacktivism include engaging in online activities such as "liking," "sharing," or "tweeting" about a cause on social media, signing an Internet petition, copying and pasting a status or message in support of the cause, sharing specific hashtags associated with the cause, or altering one's profile photo or avatar on social network services to indicate solidarity. Critics of slacktivism suggest that it fails to make a meaningful contribution to an overall cause because a low-stakes show of support, whether online or offline, is superficial, ineffective, draws off energy that might be used more constructively, and serves as a substitute for more substantive forms of activism rather than supplementing them, and might, in fact, be counter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Narcotizing Dysfunction
Narcotizing dysfunction is a theory that as mass media inundates people on a particular issue, they become apathetic to it, substituting knowledge for action. It is suggested that the vast supply of communication Americans receive may elicit only a superficial concern with the problems of society. This would result in real societal action being neglected, while superficiality covers up mass apathy. Thus, it is termed "dysfunctional" as it indicates the inherent dysfunction of both mass media and social media during controversial incidents and events. The theory assumes that it is not in the best interests of people to form a social mass that is politically apathetic and inert. The term ''narcotizing dysfunction'' was identified in the article "Mass Communication, Popular Taste and Organized Social Action", by Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and Robert K. Merton. Mass media's overwhelming flow of information has caused the populace to become passive in their social activism. Because the individu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Limousine Liberal
Limousine liberal and latte liberal are pejorative U.S. political terms used to illustrate hypocritical behavior by political liberals of upper class or upper middle class status. The label stems primarily from unwillingness of ''limousine liberals'' to practice the views they purport to uphold, e.g. calling for the use of public transportation while frequently using privately owned luxury transportation, especially by limousines or private jets in the case of the extremely affluent, claiming environmental consciousness but driving fuel inefficient vehicles, or ostensibly supporting public education while sending their children to exclusive private schools with high tuition fees. Formation and early use Procaccino campaign Democratic New York City mayoral hopeful Mario Procaccino coined the term "limousine liberal" to describe incumbent Mayor John Lindsay and his wealthy Manhattan backers during a heated 1969 campaign. Historian David Callahan says that Procaccino: It was a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Internet Petition
An online petition (or Internet petition, or e-petition) is a form of petition which is signed online, usually through a form on a website. Visitors to the online petition sign the petition by adding their details such as name and email address. Typically, after there are enough signatories, the resulting letter may be delivered to the subject of the petition, usually via e-mail. The online petition may also deliver an email to the target of the petition each time the petition is signed. Pros and cons The format makes it easy for people to make a petition at any time. Several websites allow anyone with computer access to make one to protest any cause, such as stopping construction or closure of a store. Because petitions are easy to set up, the site can attract frivolous causes, or jokes framed in the ostensible form of a petition. Online petitions may be abused if signers don't use real names, thus undermining its legitimacy. Verification, for example via a confirmation e-mail c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gauche Caviar
''Gauche caviar'' ("Caviar left") is a pejorative French term to describe someone who claims to be a socialist while living in a way that contradicts socialist values. The expression is a political neologism dating from the 1980s and implies a degree of hypocrisy. The dictionary ''Petit Larousse'' defines ''left caviar'' as a pejorative expression for a "Progressivism combined with a taste for society life and its accoutrements". One description referred to it as "the free-thinking, authority-hating, individualistic, tolerant, socialist position... which shaded into a bohemian, existential, communitarian, fairly depressed" worldview espoused by people with money and good clothes. The concept is broadly similar to the English ''Champagne socialist'', the American ''Limousine liberal'' or ''latte liberal'', the German ''Salonkommunist'', the Dutch ''salonsocialist'', the Italian ''Radical chic'', the Polish ''kawiorowa lewica'', the Portuguese ''esquerda caviar'', the Spanish ''pij ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Champagne Socialist
Champagne socialist is a political term commonly used in the United Kingdom. It is a popular epithet that implies a degree of hypocrisy, and it is closely related to the concept of the liberal elite. The phrase is used to describe self-identified socialists whose luxurious upper class or "preppy" lifestyles, metonymically including consumption of champagne, are ostensibly in conflict with their political beliefs. United Kingdom The term has been used by left-wing commentators to criticise centrist views. Some traditional left-wingers regard the first Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald as a "champagne socialist" who betrayed the Labour movement. MacDonald's lavish lifestyle and his mingling with high society is supposed to have been a corrupting influence that led to the end of the Labour Government in 1931 and the eventual formation of the National Government. More recently, the epithet has been levelled at supporters of the New Labour movement which brought Tony Blair to po ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Back-seat Driver
A backseat driver (also spelled back-seat driver) is a passenger in a vehicle who is not controlling the vehicle but who excessively comments on the driver's actions and decisions in an attempt to control the vehicle. A backseat driver may be uncomfortable with the skills of the driving, driver, feel out of control since they are not driving the vehicle, or want to tutor the driver while they are at the wheel. Many comment on the speed of the vehicle, or give alternative directions. Some backseat drivers exhibit this type of behavior simply because they feel the driver is taking risks they would not normally take, while others may have other reasons to be nervous, such as when the driver has a poor driving record. A survey of 2,000 British drivers in early 2018 found that 70% motorists found backseat driving an annoying habit and that Significant other, life partners were those most likely to interfere. Although only 21% of motorists admitted to backseat driving, half said they hav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Armchair Theorizing
Armchair theorizing, armchair philosophizing, or armchair scholarship is an approach to providing new developments in a field that does not involve primary research and the collection of new information – but instead analysis or synthesis of existent scholarship, and the term is typically pejorative, implying such scholarship is weak or frivolous. Commentary and analysis Different disciplines place different weights on purely theoretical research. Some anthropologists argue that purely theoretical anthropological research is outdated and that ethnographic fieldwork should be a necessary part of anthropological research. On the other hand, some commentators argue that economic theories are designed to explain and predict economic phenomena, which requires analysis and synthesis, and not necessarily collection, of data. Leland B. Yeager even argues that economists can legitimately extrapolate from their own personal observations to design new theories. In this sense, Yeager ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Armchair Revolutionary
Armchair revolutionary (or armchair activist and armchair socialist) is a description, often pejorative, of a speaker or writer who professes radical aims without taking any action to realize them, as if pontificating "from the comfort of the armchair". Examples In 1937, Nikolai Berdyaev wrote: "After years of living in Western Europe, Plekhanov became entirely a Western and of a very rationalist sort, fairly cultured, although his culture was not of the highest kind; more of an armchair revolutionary than a practical one. He could be a leader of a Marxist school of thought, but he could not be a leader of a revolution; that was made clear at the time of the revolution". Columnist Julie Burchill highlighted the relative level of energy exhibited in this lede: "During a long hard winter, nothing warms the cold blood of the Western armchair revolutionary more than the sight of a bunch of attractive dark-skinned people out on the streets having a right old revolution". Left Co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Armchair General
"Armchair general" is a derogatory term for a person who regards themselves as an expert on military matters, despite having little to no actual experience in the military. Alternatively, it can mean a military commander who does not participate in actual combat. Conventional usage The most common usage of the term refers to "[a] person without military experience who regards himself as an expert military strategist." This person may be a civilian whose only exposure to the military or military history is through academic or self-study, or a former member of the military, who was of low rank and/or has no experience with planning or strategic decision-making. In both cases, these individuals claim to be more capable of analyzing combat conditions and making strategic judgments than past military commanders who have been responsible for such analysis and decisions (''see also'' Armchair theorizing''). Examples of usage *In 1967, ''The New York Times'' correspondent Max Fra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
