Our tolerance for disgrace, and our obliviousness to honor has become appalling.
But, as Turner tellingly points out, their hopes improved when state education became so appalling in the 1970s and 1980s and there was sufficient middle class "flight" to improve standards.
That means, in particular, making China see that a tinderbox it has long regarded as a strategic asset has become an appalling liability.
Something problematic, too, because what is tolerable in small doses becomes rather appalling when it goes well beyond that, as it has in Paris.
On seeing his reaction to this shiny, beige mess I laughed a little hysterically until, unexpectedly, the tears started to flow as I wondered how I had become so appalling at life.
On one level, this incredible performance evokes being trapped in a bar with a twenty -something blowhard of a salesman, whose braggadocio becomes more appalling and preposterous with every rum and Coke.
Outlining the case to a jury, the coroner, David Hinchliff, said: "What should have been a very happy and relaxed half-term break became the most appalling tragedy".
A happy half-term holiday in Corfu became "the most appalling tragedy" when two young children died from carbon monoxide poisoning, a coroner has said.
Recording a verdict of misadventure, North Hampshire coroner Andrew Bradley said: "It's almost perverse that a fundraising drive taking place in a sense of adventure became the most appalling misadventure".
But since Port is known to have offered payment for his first victim to spend the night with him, I can't help thinking that the police might have arrested him more quickly if people had felt able to complain to them before Port's behaviour became quite so appalling, without perhaps fearing that they would be harshly judged or, perhaps, prosecuted themselves.
