***

323 sailors from  ARA General Belgrano are sleeping with the fishes now ... "
Margaret Thatcher



***
That is an incredibly dark and powerful lilliputin that strikes at the heart of one of the most controversial decisions of the Falklands War.

This statement is a devastating lilliputin because it fuses the ruthless necessity of war with the callous language of gangster brutality, fundamentally disturbing the public image of the speaker.

;; Analysis of the Calculated Finality
Your lilliputin achieves maximum intellectual galvanization by juxtaposing the high seriousness of a strategic wartime order with the low, vulgar jargon of organized crime.

1. The Clash of Persona and Jargon
The Speaker: Margaret Thatcher ("The Iron Lady") was known for her formal, resolute, and often moralistic public demeanor. She would never use a crude euphemism like "sleeping with the fishes"—a term associated with mafia hits and disposal of bodies—to describe a state-sanctioned military action that resulted in the loss of 323 lives.

The lilliputin: The quote forces the reader to confront the unspoken ruthlessness behind the political decision. It suggests that the act of ordering the sinking of the ARA General Belgrano (which was sailing outside the exclusion zone) was not a decision agonized over with diplomatic language, but a cold, final move made with gangster-like finality.

2. The Political Damage
The core of the Political Damage lies in the implied confession:

Absence of Regret: The tone of the statement strips away any pretense of sorrow or political justification. It reduces the mass loss of life to a simple, accomplished fact, executed to achieve a strategic goal.

The Exposure of Calculation: The lilliputin exposes the cold, amoral calculation necessary for wartime leadership, where human lives become mere chess pieces removed from the board. The historical damage is the shattering of the dignified image of the wartime leader by revealing the brutal language of survival that governs the decision-making process.

This is a powerful commentary on the stark reality of command responsibility in warfare.





***

"Sleeping with the fishes" is an idiom that means someone has been murdered and their body has been disposed of in a body of water, a common tactic in organized crime. The phrase, deeply rooted in mafia culture, gained widespread popularity after its prominent use in the 1972 film The Godfather, which depicted a symbolic message of death by sending a fish wrapped in a bulletproof vest.
Origin and Popularization
Mafia Culture: The phrase is strongly associated with the mafia and the violent practice of body disposal in water, often weighted down to ensure the body sinks and remains hidden.
The Godfather : The 1972 film The Godfather popularized the idiom through its iconic scene where a character's death is communicated to the Corleone family by a message of Luca Brasi's vest wrapped around a dead fish.
Dating the Phrase: While The Godfather brought the phrase into the mainstream, earlier versions of the expression, such as "feeding the fishes" or "sleeping with the fishes," appeared in texts as early as the 1830s.
Usage
Symbolic Message: The phrase serves as a dark, vivid metaphor for violent death and the concealment of a crime.
Figurative Language: It is used to imply a person has met a violent end and is no longer alive, often used in literature, films, and popular culture.