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Several threads have brought up the issue of Nixon and the Watergate affair. I think that there are parallels here that need to be talked about. The first is a point I made in the Question for computer geeks thread regarding hackers leaving tracks. My contention was that we are making an error when we think these people are intelligent. I’d like to pursue this a little further.
The use of dirty tricks during campaigns is almost identical. In those days Nixon’s people called it ‘rat-fucking’, a lovely term. The idea was to spread the most horrible stories about your opponents. All ‘grassroots’ and whisper campaigns, never blatant attacks from the Prez. Anything was fair game.
The idea was that the opponent would have to be on the defensive, always bad during a campaign, and there would be a bad taste left in the minds many people. Non-thinking irrational people, it’s true, but we’ve got human beings here and you’re always going to have a chunk of those. Even me, at certain times of my life, have believed the most idiotic things.
So, once the negative story is out there, it taints the candidate just slightly. This especially works if your side is trumpeting loudly how morally proper you are, no one would suspect that you were actually rat-fucking. No matter how easily the opponent can demonstrate that the story is total BS, he’s hurt. Since the attack doesn’t come directly from your guy, he suffers no ill as a mudslinger or slanderer and can still tout his moral rectitude.
Another thing to remember is how arrogant the Nixon people were. They were completely contemptuous of democracy and the voice of the people and, within the confines of the WH, they were open about this. Listen to the Nixon tapes sometime…dreadful stuff. No one at the time would have believed that Nixon could say the things he did and talk the way he did.
The Nixon camp didn’t give a shit. Their goal was to get power and do whatever the freak they wanted and screw everybody else.
And, they never thought they’d get caught. Audacity, you see. Just straight-face lie to the idiots out there in America and screw your opposition anyway that you can. Extremely arrogant and cynical. So arrogant and cynical that they were safe from detection because American’s would never believe that their leaders could be such lowlifes.
One more similarity is the Nixon claim that he was simply reflecting the strong values shared by a majority of American’s who had had their voices taken away by a noisy minority. The Great Silent Majority. This is almost identical to Bush’s claims. It resonates with the great unwashed mass of my fellow citizens who feel that events are out of their control and beyond their powers and they want to feel that, in reality, their needs and fears and desires are actually what are driving the nation forward, they are not alone. If only everyone felt like me we wouldn’t have all these troubling problems with the Negroes and those Vietnamese and Russians and, oh those young people – someone should just box their ears!
So, they go about lying to the American people, screwing the opposition, and do so without worrying about getting caught, because they’re in power. Screw ‘em, he’s the president, what’re they gonna do? Besides, nobody cares to hear that crap anyway.
And they were right. It took two years for the Watergate burglary to bring down the Nixon WH.
Which brings us to the last point. I’ve heard people talking about how we had Great Journalists in those days who would do Real Investigative Reporting. That’s true, as far as it goes, but Woodward and Bernstein wouldn’t fall into that category. They were unknowns. They had nothing to lose.
They got their nose onto the story and just wouldn’t let go. The MSM of the time ridiculed them for pursuing it. The administration sneered at them while going on to a landslide victory – the people have spoken.
They got no support from the Great Journalists at the time.
So, why would we look to the Big Names in the MSM to do anything now? They didn’t then. Ahh…but, you ask, where are the Woodward and Bernstein of today?
DU_h. Look around, dudes. It’s you. This is how its done. W & B worked their fannies off trying and trying to find out the facts with no help and no success. They had less to start with than we have now. They just kept digging and refusing to give up.
Eventually, the dam broke. They got someone from the inside to talk. Deep Throat didn’t give them real details, he gave them hints of where to look, hints about how big it was (even they didn’t think it was a big as it turned out to be) and he encouraged them to not give up.
And once it started to break, it all came out. Once the ship started sinking, the rats ran fast. The news couldn’t cover the confessions and revelations fast enough.
A sitting president, during a war, backed by a Great Majority of Americans Who Are Tired of All This Liberal (Hippie) Crap and Want To Return to Simpler Times when IQ’s Were in the Single Digits!
A press corps that did not want to hear about, let alone investigate, this ‘third-rate burglary’. An arrogant and contemptuous White House (do you remember Haldeman, Erlichman and Mitchell?).
Two years later, most of them were in jail, the whole sordid story was out, and the president had to resign in shame.
Yes, there are many parallels between the two times. These people are not monolithic, the moral values masses don’t really exist. If you went to these people who voted on ‘morals’ and showed them the dead of Iraq, they would not support the war. If they could hear Rumsfeld and the Wolfman and Rove talking off camera, they’d drop these guys in a minute.
And, these guys are contemptuous and arrogant. They think we’re all stupid, they certainly think the American public is stupid.
I think we’ll find lots and lots and lots of bungled cover-ups, of documents left behind, of footprints of fraud, because they’re thugs. They are lowlifes. They are not James Bond. These guys are not bright intelligent people who just happen to have no morals, they are pond-scum. They’re ankle biters, and back stabbers and their very sense of superiority is going to bring them down, and bring them down hard.
Right now, they are on top of the world. They think they’ve got it made. We are of no concern to them at all. They don’t even think about us, we’re history, the election was over ages ago.
They completely misjudge us. We despise them, and we are RIGHT.
And they also have made a fatal error, they misjudged the American people. If this great mass of morals voters find out they’ve been lied to, they’ve been manipulated, they’ll be pissed. I saw it in ’74 and I plan on seeing in again very soon.
These goons are mocking the very people who support them, and those people are not going to like it when they find out.
It’s a house of cards, my friends, and it will fall.
Okay, I feel better.
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