The difference is, this time I’m scared.
If you mean alternative weeklies, they never were part of any mass market. Their combined circulation was probably less than a Fantastic Four comic book.
If you mean something else, you’ll have to spell it out.
Yes, Alt weeklies, aka free press. And I never claimed they were part of any mass market, eact city had one or two plus maybe one in a university.
No text-based entity, I agree. And the reasons for that are worth further exploration.
If we’re talking widely-known left-leaning sentiment, it was surely found in the arts: Easy Rider and MASH* at the movies, and Pete Seeger and Joan Baez and left-leaning rockers in music. The Smothers Brothers were pretty lefty on television and Mort Sahl and Dick Gregory were telling subversive jokes both on television and in nightclubs.
I’m a little gobsmacked at one omission in all the previous posts that makes our present day situation so different – and so much more dangerous – than Watergate.
Chiefly, Watergate was a national concern. Nixon and his henchmen were far fewer than the number Trump controls (or rather, who control him), and they were all American-born. In contrast, Trump has welcomed and coordinated his efforts with adversarial foreign actors – and not just Russians. The House of Saud is having their way with us, too. (Reuters)
Those foreign interests happen to align with the goals of our own American oligarchy, who are all too happy to turn a blind eye and accept their illegal assistance, along with the evangelical nutjobs who have somehow persuaded themselves that Trump is their tool to facilitate the second coming because he’ll force women to have children they don’t want and can’t care for, and he might just bring about their Rapture. Look at the lunatics who are running the show today: Pence, Pompeo, Bolton, Kushner, DeVos, McConnell, Nunes, Jordan. We all know the players. The end justifies the means, and this is very different than how things were during Watergate.
During Watergate, there was still collegiality in Congress. People were better educated about civics and how their government was meant to work. They understood its success centered on compromise. The rule of law mattered. We had the filibuster. We had the draft, meaning more people had actual skin in the game. Citizens understood the importance of the separation of church and state. They also had a much better grasp on history, meaning they could still appreciate the importance of international alliances and were much more clear-eyed about the hostile foreign actors. Diplomacy mattered.
Lots more people recognized the emotion of shame.
Now it’s a winner-take-all smash ‘n grab. The criminals in power are monetizing, selling out, stealing everything not nailed down as fast as they can, without regard to how vulnerable it leaves our national security or the well being of our citizens or our government institutions. In fact, undermining our government institutions is the feature, not a bug. Waving a rebel flag and wearing a stupid red hat constitutes patriotism.
Understand the projection at work today that had no role during Watergate: When Trump screams, “Rigged!” it’s because he is rigging. When Republicans holler, “Voter fraud!” it’s because they are actively tampering with the vote. There will be a citizenship question on the 2020 census, because it skews favorable for Republicans and is no longer a means of counting the actual number of people in the country. For selfish personal gain, Trump and his party will zealously exploit racial, religious and cultural schisms for as long as they can to stay in power. He has his echo chambers in Fox “News” and social media as his force multipliers.
Trump and his minions are going to be frenetically busy over the next couple of years, tearing down every norm we’ve recognized since the inception of this nation. They will welcome both foreign and domestic interference with the 2020 election. Even if Dems prevail, they will not go peacefully. The will scream the election was “stolen.” They are doing it solely for self-enrichment and to protect themselves from criminal prosecution for their acts. When they are done, we are not going to recognize the place – or indeed, the world they’ve left behind.
Not much like Watergate at all, in my opinion.
That’s what they said about Nixon, too.
And in a way they were right. Trust in government has nearly disappeared since Vietnam and Watergate. Reagan was allowed to get away with making the government the enemy. Trump’s damning it as the swamp and the deep state are a direct outgrowth of that.
Somehow, a new generation of politicians will have to make Americans trust government again. Whether that’s possible in an internet age is doubtful, but the country can’t be saved otherwise. Of all the million faults the right has, that may be the ultimate.
Having lived through it, I agree with you to a point. I remember the sick feeling of watching Nixon’s criminal behavior as it was revealed. How it undermined my trust in government. I also remember how unsettled I felt for years after, unease at the rise of the Moral Majority (sic) and Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, along with the Right’s willingness to demonize anything offered by Democrats. They certainly exploited the lingering Nixon stench of Something is Not Right in America.
But I think the distrust of government that led to the Era of Trump was much more an outgrowth of BushCo lying us into a huge, pointless costly war with Iraq, together with a complete underestimation/appreciation of all that Obama accomplished in his 8 years despite tremendous and frequently unwarranted opposition by Republicans. Republicans exploited the very real pain suffered by citizens arising out of Bush’s blunders with relentless focus – and, sadly, success.
There’s so much right in this post - I wish I could rep it a million.
I think it’s important for people to understand the shift that is occurring in their own government. I know people think I’m some kind of bat-shit insane conspiracy nutter when I speak of oligarchy and plutocracy taking over the government, but that’s exactly what it is. It’s a struggle between private power and public power, which isn’t really a new struggle, but one that has reached a new phase. And in this phase, we’re at the point at which those who are in power, presumably to serve the interests of the American people, simply don’t; they’re using their government high office only insofar as it serves their interests. Russian klepocratic oligarchs and others, like the House of Saud, see opportunities to align their interests with those of American oligarchs, who don’t have nearly the same attachment to democratic values and therefore don’t feel compelled to criticize their attacks on civil liberties in their countries. On the surface, people still assume that because we have elections and that we still have functioning institutions that we still live in the same old democracy we always have, but public confidence in these institutions is eroding to the point where functional democracy as we know it could collapse relatively soon. At the state level, it is already beginning to crack in some cases, and that’s true even at the federal level.
Regarding the evangelicals, I think it’s important to remember that it’s not just religion that matters to them; it’s also money and power they desire. The Falwells, the Devoses…they ain’t in the poorhouse. It’s just like it was throughout much of Medieval Europe: the religious zealots use God to gain wealth and power. They use God as a smokescreen to sucker their devotees into believing that it’s all part of God’s plan that our lives suck and that the lord’s messengers are obscenely wealthy.
The early 20th Century, which is the time during which the adults of the Watergate era were born and raised, was a time in which people began to value public institutions and also working cooperatively in the public interest. The first half of the 20th Century was a time in which ‘people power’ reached new heights, and the idea of shared sacrifice and doing things in the public interest mattered more. This is probably because a generation of people lived through the Great Depression and World War Two - challenges which affected nearly everyone in the country in some way or another. The adults during the Watergate era lived through WPA, TVA, and wartime rations. Big government wasn’t the enemy; it was something that could work for people if we had the right people running it.
Furthermore, the early 20th Century was an era in which we began to believe in the power of science. Despite the objections of fundamentalists, most people gradually began to embrace scientific discovery as something that benefited humankind. We developed new vaccines. We cleaned up drinking water. We had improved sanitation in public places. And as a result, we lived longer and healthier lives. We didn’t claim any of the diseases they cured to be fakes or hoaxes.
This, precisely.
It is republicans who are actively attempting to undermine the public’s trust in government because they are the ones who stand to benefit. That’s what explains why they don’t give a shit about the federal deficit or the national debt now – because they never did, and they only do when a progressive comes to office and wants to use the power of the presidency to raise taxes on the rich to pay for things that benefit the rest of us. That’s why - and I say this in complete seriousness - Republicans want to throw the budget so far out of alignment that they will force everyone to make a choice between funding the military or funding government assistance - or default. And if progressives for the military, then they’ll probably claim that we’re denying soldiers and veterans their pay and call for a military takeover of the United States. We are living with fascists. Don’t like that term? Okay, then we’re living with oligarchal authoritarians who won’t stop destroying this country because they don’t really believe in a United States of America unless they control it. It’s up to the general public to understand what’s happening here and stop them before it’s too late.
Sorry, missed the edit window: if progressives vote to cut funding for the military…
On the day the Watergate break-in and bust made the news my wife and I looked at each other and both of us said, “Nixon’s the one”, which was his campaign slogan in 1968. It took more than two years to prove it, but Nixon left the smoking gun of those tapes.
As soon as it became clear the Russians interfered with the 2016 election, I believed Trump was involved. I still do, Barr or no. Proving it might be impossible since Trump is more of a mafia don than Tricky Dick.
The Trump administration is orders of magnitude worse than Nixon’s. It feels far worse. I never feared Nixon might declare himself president for life. I have at least a little fear Trump might do so. Nixon was politically corrupt, but not very corrupt personally. Trump has been rolling in corruption all his life. Nixon at least went to church occasionally. Trump meets with right wing religous nutjobs only when he does something to weaken the 1st amendment.
The only time I was concerned Nixon might blow up the world was during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. I worry about Trump doing that every single day.
I cannot imagine Trump, looking at a proposal to fight a fire, saying, “But it would be wrong.”
Quoted in full because, alas, I cannot dispute a single word.
Watergate was much different. Then, you had the government trying to use the IRS against its political opponents, and bugging them. Totally different. And of course, the investigation into Watergate actually found something against the President.
Regards,
Shodan
No matter how cute you think you’re being, you should avoid using Investor’s Business Daily as a cite. The only difference between them and the Onion is that IBD believes its satire.
Well, I was alive…I think I was around 12 or 13, if memory serves. What I remember most was my mom or one of my aunts were listening to things on the radio, and the announcer guy said something like Nixon resigns! and whoever it was said something like ‘thank God!’. That always struck me. Other than that, I remember in my family (Hispanic and VERY Democrat) he was not well loved even before this, and they were all pretty much in lock step that he was a crook and had to go. I can’t recall any sort of alternative narrative at the time than that, but then at that time there weren’t any Republicans in the family, and we didn’t have access to the internet or 24 hour news (or even a TV in my house). There was the news paper, which I didn’t read then, and radio, which I mostly listened to if an adult had it on, and was mainly in Spanish and played mariachi type music.
For the OP: Season One of Slate’s “Slow Burn” podcast attempts to portray “what was it like to live through Watergate?” through various means, including looking at media coverage and interviews with bit players. It’s made by a team that was too young to “live through” it, but is old enough to draw connections to what’s going on now.
Worth a listen. On the question of Nixon’s popularity during the sordid saga, Episode 5is particularly good.
That the government bugged Trump Tower is an established fact, and therefore your suggestion will be given all the consideration it deserves.
Regards,
Shodan
Yes, this is an established fact that the government was tapping the phones at Trump Tower. What isn’t a fact, and likely not true, is that this was done because Trump was a political enemy of the people who ordered the bugging. The reason it was done is because there was legitimate concern that Russian interests were working with Trump.
Apologies for the double post. My understanding is that while Trump himself was not the target, their was legitimate suspicion that someone in his campaign was working with the Russians.
Oh, well, we’re being serious then.
OK. Seriously stand up for that post and state that you honestly consider both of those events comparable to what Nixon did in Watergate.