For decades, the Japanese have been drip-fed the idea that big earthquakes are predictable and, despite the horrifying experience of Kobe, polls show that half of them still expect to be given adequate warning of any future earthquake.
If Swift or Abraham grew up being force-fed the idea that their skin colour and hair texture automatically make them ugly, criminal suspects and second-class citizens, I'm sure they would be a bit angrier too.
Mark Danner, a journalist who has written extensively about the covert program for The New York Review of Books, said the news reports had fed the idea that brutal interrogations could instantly glean information about terrorist plans.
Such wanton killings are, of course, entirely counterproductive to the causes they are supposed to promote – and the targets, shaped by a reactionary religious framework, feed the idea that these are some mutant product of European cultural wars.
Though we come to understand that Woland is the devil, Bulgakov is rarely explicit, preferring to use other titles, as if to feed the idea that to meet him will drive you insane.
"An application of judicial power that does not rest on facts is worse than mindless, it is inherently dangerous," wrote Judge Jed Rakoff, in response to a settlement by Citigroup with the SEC.To cope with the deluge of litigation, banks are falling over themselves to hire ex-regulators, feeding the idea that the law is too chaotic to be understood by anyone outside the system.
The impact of this cold war victors' version of the past has been to relativise the unique crimes of Nazism, bury those of colonialism and feed the idea that any attempt at radical social change will always lead to suffering, killing and failure.
He put us in touch, and we fed the idea from there".
In the years leading up to college, teens are force-fed the idea that college will be the high point of your life.
