<p>The shrewd dictator publicized the prosperity of one small village in order to_____ the ______ of the economic hardships that plagued most of his country.
(A) announce . . encroachment
(B) corroborate . . resurgence
(C) derail . . instability
(D) downplay . . magnitude
(E) expedite . . proliferation</p>
<p>The answer is D but how does publicizing another villages success downplay another villages struggles?</p>
<p>he shifted the attention to one flourishing village so that ppl wouldn’t notice the magnitude of the economic hardships that plagued most of the country. by doing this and making ppl unaware of the hardships he made it seem like the country is flourishing and not in a recession.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure it’s (D). That question sounds familiar.
You don’t need to know the words of this questions really well. I’ve noticed that whenever dictator is used on the SAT, it’s usually in a negative context. The sentence says that there is economic hardship in most of his country. We just don’t know how much. If you look at the first part, it talks about a small village. So I ask myself, if there was not a lot of economic hardship, why would he mention the small village? It wouldn’t make any sense for him to mention it other than to blame it for the hardship, however none of the words match this context. So I ask myself, if there was a lot of economic hardship, why would he mention the small village? Maybe he wants people to focus on that tiny part of the country that is doing well in order to forget about the rest of the nation that is suffering. (D) makes the most sense in this case.
Let me know if you need better clarification. I can makw it clearer if you want to.</p>
<p>Thank you both!!</p>