The real crisis is European impotence to respond, and it would be outrageous if Europe can't cope with that when the vast majority of refugees are in much poorer countries like Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.
England's bowlers were reduced to impotence, but the real difference Anderson would have made was in the field.
This is Hare's real theme: the alienation and impotence of idealists who see the party, in which they once invested so much hope, pimping for funds and turning governance into a form of survival.
The executive director of the Paris-based research group EuropaNova attributes the general disenchantment to "a mood of angry impotence as the real power to shape events largely shifted from national political leaders [who, in principle at least, are subject to democratic politics] to the market, the institutions of the European Union and corporations", quite in accord with neoliberal doctrine.
In James Berardinelli's view: "The basic impotence of the characters only emphasizes the real-world difficulties faced by peacemakers".
In the movies, screenwriters from "Sunset Boulevard" onward have been embodiments of impotence, and it's at least arguable that real screenwriters treat their fictional counterparts so harshly because they're trying to exorcise their own feelings of inadequacy.
They can't keep them out at one end, and their impotence in front of goal is becoming a real worry: they've now gone 277 minutes without scoring, and their only goals this season came in a single game, that zany 4-3 against Houston Dynamo.
If South Africa can get this right, it has the real potential to turn dread into capital, rather than to default to positions of impotence and blaming outsiders.
This emphasis on their meekness and impotence draws the sting from the political material, and their bumbling love of booze and the good times ("let's drink it better!") is no real substitute.
"It's a testament to management's impotence that the deal wasn't done-or more probably, to management's real desire to not do the deal.
