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1993, PJ O'Rourke, “Democracy in its diapers”, in Give War a Chance, Picador:
It is the beauty of well designed fascism that it gives every piss-ant an ant hill to piss from.
2005 January 24, Seymour M. Hersh, “The Coming Wars”, in The New Yorker, archived from the original on 2015-08-25, page 24:
“Everyone is saying, ‘You can’t be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,’” the former intelligence official told me. “But they say, ‘We’ve got some lessons learned—not militarily, but how we did it politically. We’re not going to rely on agency pissants.’ No loose ends, and that’s why the C.I.A. is out of there.”
(derogatory) A person who adheres strictly to a rule or policy despite current circumstances.
Their manager is a real pissant about break times.
(derogatory) A person seemingly incapable of focusing on anything but the trivial, especially in the sense of trivial or irrelevant criticism.