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I find it fascinating that there are still regular references to Watergate in American political reporting/commentary. It just doesn't seem relevant.
From my contacts with Americans, it seems that anti-trump Americans are in a state of shock (understandable), but still clinging to the hope that their institutions will save them (debatable considering global examples with the rise of authoritarian/corporate regimes in democratic environments; generally a "second term" tends to be a make or break period).
The pro-trump group seems to be doubling down on trump and even low key trying to justify statements like the Gaza annexation proposal by claiming "that's just Trump, he says things." Some of the stuff I've heard honestly made me a bit uncomfortable (these are people I know well for 15+ years) and I don't discuss internal US matters with the pro-trump camp.
Watergate was a really big deal. By all accounts, it still technically is. It’s pretty blatant corruption and was cartoonishly executed. That said, what’s happening now is under the guise of “making America greater.”
The players are equally cartoonish goons (Anthony Scaramucci? Guilliani? Steve Bannon? His entire administration was toon town) but Trump is slimier than Nixon and is great at getting people to do his bidding for access. The deluge of news and control of the narrative they have has greatly played into their hand. They figured out how to rig the modern media machine. Nixon could never have done that.
The cult following he has is truly astonishing. The perfect toilet bowl of gullible and psychopath
Watergate is about as far back as the average person can connect the historical dots. My view is that it goes much further back, to slavery itself - but many still view Watergate as some kind of original sin.
Watergate is as far as you can draw a direct line. That's when Roger Ailes really started working on right-wing television. That got us Fox News, and here we are today.
I'd say Nixon administration as a whole. They picked up the dixiecrats post Civil Rights movement. Look up Nixon's political Strategist Kevin Phillips and his discussion on the Southern Strategy where it was specifically targeting the racist whites to bring them into the Republican party.
But then that's the part where I can say goes all the way back to slavery, but hey, if you grew up in the South the Civil War was never quite over even to modern era. But I'd definitely say the Southern Strategy the Republicans put into place would be where I'd say the beginning of drawing a direct line to where we're at now.
This right here. Reconstruction was a failure, a lot of traitors should've been tried, not allowed to go home with dignity and honor. Lands should've been confiscated and given to the newly freed peoples, 40 acres and a mule should've been the law. The racism never went away it just learned to hide behind code words and shared looks.
Ah yes, the Lee Atwater strategy to bring in the Reagan administration. It's not blacks they're against, just "Welfare queens."
With all historicism, how direct a line you can draw depends on how zoomed out you are. There are larger trends and forces at play that began with the Black Plague or further, from a certain altitude.
But your point is well made, there are very concrete elements in motion that began with Watergate.
Personally, I find it simply amazing that Watergate is thought of as the worst thing in recent memory, when Iran/Contra is right fucking there. I think Iran/Contra is more instructive in how Republicans of today behave.
Basically, no one at the very top paid the price. Ronnie Raygun got to ride off into the sunset, even if he was hated at the time, to have the Strategic Forgettery Crew work in the decades since to resurrect his "memory", in a very Orwellian fashion.
Even naming shit after that fucker. They still want that criminal on currency. And that's with him having the most criminal administration in history - at least up until donvict. I don't know how donvict's first term or the second stacks up to Ronnie Raygun's criminal legacy.
There are different types of worst.
Watergate was a different type of worst than Iran/Contra, and vis versa.
Not everything is the same, and no one should group every event in history together as one thing.
I think Iran/Contra was one of the first incidents where the media did quite a lot to paper over the issue. Statements were made like how "tired" the American people were of scandal and so on, given all the things found in the 1970s (I'm sure the people that lived through seeing MLK, JFK, and RFK assassinated, then seeing things like Nixon's Watergate and the Church Committee's findings did go through quite a lot, but Iran/Contra hearings were over a decade later than Watergate) and how "America" did not want to go through such things, etc...
I think if the media had given both of these things equal treatment, rather than trying to run cover for the Republicans because of some supposed public sentiment they were sensing in the nation, impressions might be quite a bit different now. I don't think Watergate should be the metric every scandal since then, but this is probably the continuing influence of boomers, thinking the very worst thing(s) happened when they were in their formative years, rather than looking at the actual crimes involved and how one might have had far broader implications than the other...
I guess the other thing to consider is that you can slap "gate" on virtually anything and people know what you mean. You could try slapping "tra" or "ontra" on things maybe but most people won't understand the reference. Sadly.
We started naming every scandal [name]-Gate after it so it's still in the public conscious and only one sitting US president has ever left their term early due to scandal.
Of course the rules are different now. Impeachment and removal (or resignation to avoid it) are almost impossible with the current state of Congress. So we can only say "This might have been as big as the Watergate scandal if we still had any ethics as a country."
It’s a stupid name if convention.