But it is a startling reality nonetheless, and an embarrassment for a country that considers itself a paragon of freedom.
But the success of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in the local elections held across Britain on May 2nd was nonetheless startling.
Yet the resulting stillness in Miami this season is nonetheless startling, as the most dangerous team in the entire league operates under a cloak of a relative quiet.
Their seniority, needless to say, is earned - they have had plenty of time to ripen and grow - but it is nonetheless startling to see how thoroughly American writing is dominated by this generation.
On one level it was a long-overdue but nonetheless startling confession: Floyd Landis, the disgraced American cyclist who was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France victory after failing doping tests, has finally decided to come clean, admitting to the use of performance-enhancing drugs throughout his career.
Though the bursting of the housing bubble and ensuing great recession takes a big share of the blame for families' weakening finances, it is nonetheless startling that a single financial event — only a hiccup on the road to prosperity of Americans on the top of the pile — could erase a generation worth of progress for those in the middle.
The Spurs' effort in Game 4 of their first-round series against the Grizzlies looked a lot like a building imploding — it might have been scheduled (Duncan is, after all, 35) but nonetheless startling — and then there was the small matter of United States District Judge Susan Richard Nelson's complete demolition of the N.F.L.'s lockout.
While he acknowledged the results aren't scientific, they are nonetheless startling: Nearly 90percentt of responders said they have thought about killing themselves; 20 percent said they have tried.
Not quite a newcomer (she sang with Irish band Elephant), Ireton is nonetheless a startling discovery.
But their arrest is nonetheless a startling turn of events for the pair, who first rose to prominence on Wall Street in the 1980s.
