Those who remember Washington's cold war culture in the 1980s will recall the shocked reactions to Reagan's intervention. People interested in foreign policy were astonished when in 1985 he met alone at Geneva - alone not a single strategic thinker at his elbow! - with the Soviet Communist master Gorbachev.
The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for a hundred years.
We have one of the few societies the only one I can think of right offhand where your health care is so tied to your job so that when an American company has to hire they have to think about health care.
Wolfgang Tillman's stunning large-scale pictures being shown for the first time were so offhand I failed to see them as art.