* homage of the Peter,Paul and Mary classic
Drudge proclaims the new Rasmussen poll which shows Obama only beating Ron Paul by 1%. What he doesn't mention is the results of yesterday's CNN poll which shows Obama beating all Republican contenders by 8-12 % points. In almost all one-to-one contests, Obama exceeds his 2008 percentage. That's with his approval rating drooping.
It's still shocking to me to realize that for the first time in my life the President of the United States is younger than I am. This sudden awareness prompted me to look at the age of some of the Republican aspirants in 2012. Mitt Romney would be 66/67. Newt would be a old 70. Ron Paul himself would be 75 and Haley Barbour would be 66. Only Mike Huckabee would be a relatively youthful 57. Put a fork in them, they're done. Frankly, I don't think we have seen the nominee emerge yet.
The election to replace Congressman Wexler in Florida was the first contest post-health care reform. While the district was Democratic by registration, it had a high percentage of elderly voters whom the Republicans are banking on this year. The Republican ran against President Obama and the healthreform bill. He got crushed. At the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, all speakers urged candidates to run against Obama. The recommendation is absolutely nuts since he's the most popular politician in the American system right now.
Norm Ornstein may get shot. The long-time student of our political system at AEI wrote an op-ed today for the Washington Post, which examines the conservative rhetoric against the President and places his initiatives against past conservative ideas and Presidents. Ridiculing New Ginrgich statement that "Obama was the most radical President in American history", Norm concluded that Obama was centrist, pragmatic and working from the moderate center-left but by no means was he a leftist.
George Schultz compounds the problem for Republicans by writing a full-throated endorsement of the new nuclear treaty from the point of view of President Reagan's former Secretary of State. This op-ed goes beyond his verbal comments and applauds Obama's new nuclear policy review.
Republican Senators are already lining up with their hands out for their votes to ratify. McCain wants more funds for the modernization of nukes, while others are demanding commitments about the nuclear defense system aka Star Wars.
Ron Kyl was the first Republican out of the box to dismiss the Nuke Security Summit as no big deal because it went over the same issues we knew existed but didn't deal with Iran. The Washington Times is reporting that conservatives believe that President Obama's talk about a nuclear terrorist threat is hype. That's sort of a relief to hear conservatives downgrade the threat of terrorists. I thought I was supposed to be afraid all the time.
New Gingrich sent one of his fund-raising letters this morning which warned about increased taxes and reminded us of the Open Carry Rallies to protect the Second Amendment. A little problem--a report yesterday showed that 99% of American taxpayers got relief this year. Another poll showed that taxes ranked about seventh in the list of concerns by Americans, slightly above terrorism.
After his book Worse than Watergate, John Dean wrote his least known book Conservatives without a Conscience (Penguin 2007) where he tried to discover for his own satisfaction the reasons the conservative movement went awry. The project began during the Clinton years when John Dean talked with Barry Goldwater about the situation. A frail Barry Goldwater was appalled at the tone of our politics and feared that decent people would be driven away from public service. He complained about Republicans turning off voters and engaging in dirty politics.
John Dean asked Barry why he thought this was. "It's these so-called social or cultural conservatives. And I don't know what in hell possesses them. I'd like to find out", the former Senator said.
Later as the project progressed, Dean found out how Charles Colson was actively working to promote the book Silent Coup, which blamed John Dean for the Watergate cover-up. Colson who was then a born-again Christian and an activist on the Religious Right puzzled Dean. He called Barry up for his take. "Goddamn it, John, The Republicans are selling their soul to win elections. Goldwater warned," Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the party, and they're sure trying to do so. It's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. The government won't work without it. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.
John Dean discovered Bob Altemeyer's work on authoritarianism and uses it to cast light on the emergence of authoritarian conservatism as it exists in today's Republican Party. Since Newt wants to run for President, it is well-worth reading Dean's account of Newt and his rise to political power in the House.
While I love to read these books anyway, they are a help in trying to explain the bizarre behavior of Republicans today. Barack Obama wins the election with the highest number of popular votes in American history--something never mentioned again. A short time before he takes his oath of office, Mitch McConnell calls a Republican Senate Caucus meeting to instill party discipline that there would be no cooperation with the new Administration on anything. This was first reported by Arlen Specter as the reason he left the party and later confirmed by the reporting of the New York Times. The country faces Great Depression II and two wars. What rational being would adopt such a political strategy in a national crisis? And the strategy has continued into the second year of Obama's term. The Republican Party has gleefully become the Party of Hell No. From John Boehner's tirade on the House Floor against the healthcare bill it's clear they don't believe in representative democracy anymore.
John Dean does us a service by locating where this mentality came from and pointing out that this resembles no conservatism recognized by old Republicans. He asserts what many conservatives have told me that conservatism in an attitude and an approach but not an ideology. Dean shows you how it became an ideology and why it is destructive to the political system.
Fox News is now criticizing the tea baggers. I believe Roger Ailes looked at the internal polling numbers and saw they were hurting the Republicans and decided to pull back a bit. The escalation of violent rhetoric is leading to somewhere nasty and the instigators are now dialing back to avoid blame for the catastrophe.
In the worst case scenario, read Frederic Spotts' The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation (Yale, 2008). Wonderfully written.
Showing posts with label John Dean. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Dean. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Saturday, April 3, 2010
The Authoritarians
Bob Altemeyer is one academic I would love to meet. An American teaching at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. He has a casual style in his book and a great sense of humor for a grim subject. He was brought to the attention of the reading public because of John Dean,the former White House counsel to Richard Nixon, who wrote Conservatives without a Conscience to try and explain what happened to the Republican Party he used to know. For insight, Dean consulted the psychological studies of authoritarianism by Bob Altemeyer. Unfortunately, Altemeyer has been dragged into the political debate in this country over the last few years and feels he has to explain himself to the lay crowd. Working on authoritarianism since 1966, Altemeyer pledges he had no problems with his draft board before applying for his university position in Canada. He is not a liberal or leftist and he cites his wife who is a liberal as witness. He also claims not to have received any grant money from liberal or leftwing foundations for his research work. In fact, he claims he is so bad at writing proposals he's never received grants for his work. Academics would know his work in psychology from The Authoritarian Specter (Harvard University Press, 1996).
At that time, Altemeyer vowed that he had completed his last study of Right-Wing Authoritarianism and saw no reason to pursue it further. He notes that he considers Communist apparatchiks psychologically right-wing authoritarians so that the readers don't get confused and try and pigeon-hole his research.
If you're like me, you're curious what went wrong in the United States and why are these people emerging that seem so menacing. For me the moment when things crystallized was when I woke up and realized the Fourth Amendment was gone--and it was gone because of a secret bipartisan agreement on the Hill. Not that I have been obsessed by the Fourth Amendment, but I was fond of having it around and I woke up missing it. Another moment was reading the Patriot Act, which I did in its almost 1,000-page splendor, and found that any citizen could be stripped of their citizenship without due process. And that included me whose family has been sneaking around America since 1670. It's not simply because I am a beacon of civil libertarianism but rather I am motivated for self interest.
Bob Altemeyer got pulls back into his field because of events in the United States. "But mainly I am doing this because the six years have provided so many examples of authoritarian behavior in American government. There has never been a more obvious, appropriate and pressing time for this discussion. The threat that authoritarians poses to American democracy has probably never been clearer. It is just a coincidence, but human affairs have provided the foremost example of how badly authoritarianism can damage the United States at the same time as my work has come to an end and I am telling everyone what I've found. George W. Bush has been the most authoritarian president in my lifetime, as well as the worst. And that's not a coincidence. Assuming democracy prevails, future Americans should know how close we came to losing it in our day. "Those who do not learn from the past..."
It should be noted that Altemeyer does not contribute to political parties and is not a member of one. He even jokes he has never been a member of the Communist Party. Listen to his warnings about today. Remember this was printed in 2006 when the Democrats took back the Congress. He talks about why one should bother reading his book.
" First, if you are concerned about what has happened in America since a radical right-wing segment of the population began taking control of the government about a dozen years ago,I think you'll find a lot in this book that says your fears are well-founded. As many have pointed out, the Republic is once again passing through perilous times. The concept of constitutional democracy has been under attack--and by the American government no less! The mid-term elections of 2006 give hope that the best values and traditions of the country will ultimately prevail . But it could prove a huge mistake to think the enemies of freedom and equality have lost the war just because they were recently rebuffed in the polls. I'll be very much surprised if their leaders don't frame the setback as a test of the followers' faith, causing them to redouble their efforts. They came so close to getting what they want,they're not likely to pack up and go away without an all-out drive. But even if their leaders cannot find an acceptable presidential candidate for 2008, even if authoritarians play a much diminished role in the next election, even if they temporarily fade from view, they will still be there,aching for a dictatorship that will force their views on everyone. And they will surely be energized again, as they were in 1994, if a new administration infuriates them while carrying out its mandate. The country is not out of danger yet."
Yesterday, Sean Hannity told an adoring audience that "We won the (healthcare) debate, with you Tim McVeigh wannabes". They're BACK!
My quotes of Altemeyer don't do credit to his insightful and probing work on authoritarian followers. He said that an authoritarian leader is comical until he has millions fo followers. The book analyses political authoritarian followers as well as fundamentalist authoritarian religious followers. If you have wondered why tea party people complain about Obama and the constitution but never made a peep about the shredding of the constitution during the Bush-Cheney years, these studies answer that. At the end of the book, he deals with authoritarian leaders which match a different psychology and one that I found helpful in understanding what I perceived as cynical behavior and why and how this occurs. He has a delightful footnote at the end ranking the top Corrupt members in Congress in 2006 and their support from the Focus on the Family, the Christian Right lobbying group. We are now in politics that is beyond reason.
He cites approvingly Kevin Phillips 2006 book American Theology how religious conservatives have taken control of the Republican Party turning it into the first religious party in U.S. History and endangering everyone else's rights, the future of the country and that of the world. Kevin Phillips noted," By the end of the 1990s more than half of the fifty Republican state committees had been taken over by the religious right at least once."
If you recall my postings about Christian revisionist history, the leading Christian revisionist is a man named David Barton, who appeared again with Glenn Beck this week in Florida. Unbeknownst to me David Barton was the vice-chairman of the Texas Republican Party.
Altemeyer in examining both types of authoritarianism also discusses their forms of aggression and how they are most apt to attack "outsiders" (fill in the blank) in the dead of night or alone with a gang of like-minded people. This becomes particularly relevant for his section of how religious authoritarians view minorities and the gay community.
Next week I'll write more on his specific findings, which I found helpful in trying to make sense of the senseless. Next week also brings a motherload of books, which will help probe the whole issue of how did we get enthralled with the free market and let everything melt down. Stay tuned.
At that time, Altemeyer vowed that he had completed his last study of Right-Wing Authoritarianism and saw no reason to pursue it further. He notes that he considers Communist apparatchiks psychologically right-wing authoritarians so that the readers don't get confused and try and pigeon-hole his research.
If you're like me, you're curious what went wrong in the United States and why are these people emerging that seem so menacing. For me the moment when things crystallized was when I woke up and realized the Fourth Amendment was gone--and it was gone because of a secret bipartisan agreement on the Hill. Not that I have been obsessed by the Fourth Amendment, but I was fond of having it around and I woke up missing it. Another moment was reading the Patriot Act, which I did in its almost 1,000-page splendor, and found that any citizen could be stripped of their citizenship without due process. And that included me whose family has been sneaking around America since 1670. It's not simply because I am a beacon of civil libertarianism but rather I am motivated for self interest.
Bob Altemeyer got pulls back into his field because of events in the United States. "But mainly I am doing this because the six years have provided so many examples of authoritarian behavior in American government. There has never been a more obvious, appropriate and pressing time for this discussion. The threat that authoritarians poses to American democracy has probably never been clearer. It is just a coincidence, but human affairs have provided the foremost example of how badly authoritarianism can damage the United States at the same time as my work has come to an end and I am telling everyone what I've found. George W. Bush has been the most authoritarian president in my lifetime, as well as the worst. And that's not a coincidence. Assuming democracy prevails, future Americans should know how close we came to losing it in our day. "Those who do not learn from the past..."
It should be noted that Altemeyer does not contribute to political parties and is not a member of one. He even jokes he has never been a member of the Communist Party. Listen to his warnings about today. Remember this was printed in 2006 when the Democrats took back the Congress. He talks about why one should bother reading his book.
" First, if you are concerned about what has happened in America since a radical right-wing segment of the population began taking control of the government about a dozen years ago,I think you'll find a lot in this book that says your fears are well-founded. As many have pointed out, the Republic is once again passing through perilous times. The concept of constitutional democracy has been under attack--and by the American government no less! The mid-term elections of 2006 give hope that the best values and traditions of the country will ultimately prevail . But it could prove a huge mistake to think the enemies of freedom and equality have lost the war just because they were recently rebuffed in the polls. I'll be very much surprised if their leaders don't frame the setback as a test of the followers' faith, causing them to redouble their efforts. They came so close to getting what they want,they're not likely to pack up and go away without an all-out drive. But even if their leaders cannot find an acceptable presidential candidate for 2008, even if authoritarians play a much diminished role in the next election, even if they temporarily fade from view, they will still be there,aching for a dictatorship that will force their views on everyone. And they will surely be energized again, as they were in 1994, if a new administration infuriates them while carrying out its mandate. The country is not out of danger yet."
Yesterday, Sean Hannity told an adoring audience that "We won the (healthcare) debate, with you Tim McVeigh wannabes". They're BACK!
My quotes of Altemeyer don't do credit to his insightful and probing work on authoritarian followers. He said that an authoritarian leader is comical until he has millions fo followers. The book analyses political authoritarian followers as well as fundamentalist authoritarian religious followers. If you have wondered why tea party people complain about Obama and the constitution but never made a peep about the shredding of the constitution during the Bush-Cheney years, these studies answer that. At the end of the book, he deals with authoritarian leaders which match a different psychology and one that I found helpful in understanding what I perceived as cynical behavior and why and how this occurs. He has a delightful footnote at the end ranking the top Corrupt members in Congress in 2006 and their support from the Focus on the Family, the Christian Right lobbying group. We are now in politics that is beyond reason.
He cites approvingly Kevin Phillips 2006 book American Theology how religious conservatives have taken control of the Republican Party turning it into the first religious party in U.S. History and endangering everyone else's rights, the future of the country and that of the world. Kevin Phillips noted," By the end of the 1990s more than half of the fifty Republican state committees had been taken over by the religious right at least once."
If you recall my postings about Christian revisionist history, the leading Christian revisionist is a man named David Barton, who appeared again with Glenn Beck this week in Florida. Unbeknownst to me David Barton was the vice-chairman of the Texas Republican Party.
Altemeyer in examining both types of authoritarianism also discusses their forms of aggression and how they are most apt to attack "outsiders" (fill in the blank) in the dead of night or alone with a gang of like-minded people. This becomes particularly relevant for his section of how religious authoritarians view minorities and the gay community.
Next week I'll write more on his specific findings, which I found helpful in trying to make sense of the senseless. Next week also brings a motherload of books, which will help probe the whole issue of how did we get enthralled with the free market and let everything melt down. Stay tuned.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Conspiracy's End
I love conspiracy theories. They are a form of gnostic knowledge about our political universe. Conspiracy theories are not disturbing; they are re-assuring, making sense of what doesn't. You can almost say that conspiracy theories are symptoms of our thirst for meaning. The reason our political hopes and dreams are thwarted is because there are larger forces and entities controlled by sinister personalities who really control the world and manipulate reality to their wants. You could even develop computer programs to generate conspiracies. I confess I subscribe to conspiracy theories, I like them. But this week has been a deflating one for all of us.
The assassinations of President Kennedy, his brother Robert and Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr. shaped my generation and ushered in an age of upheaval in our politics. Shortly after the assasination of her husband, Mrs Jackie Kennedy opined," How awful is it that Jack was killed by some little Communist shit?" And we have all dutifully fell in line trying to make it that he wasn't. The killing of the President has produced whole libraries of alternative theories, films and pieces of good to great literature. We have Oliver Stone's JFK, which posits the assassination was an inside job by the shadowy world of the spooks and military because President Kennedy wanted to end the Vietnam War, which we now know he did. Charles McCarry wrote a wonderful spy novel Tears of Autumn, which posits the Kennedy assassination was the product of Indochinese heroin dealers linked to the Diem family, who hired a French assassin. James Ellroy in Ten Thousand Cold Men writes with his full amp style of a complex plot involving Howard Hughes, CIA personnel and the mafia. Non-fiction books link the Gambino family, Jimmy Hoffa and the New Orleans mob into a fantastic, yet plausible plot of revenge for a series of perceived slights and wrongs. Conservatives speculate about the role of Fidel Castro and cite LBJ's dark interview near the end of his life, saying "We were running Murder,Inc. down there (in Cuba), anything could have happened". Much to my dismay, Norman Mailer, whom we could trust in these dark matters, wrote Oswald near the end of his life, basically confirming Jackie's original statement. But I thought Mailer had sold out to the spooks so he could finish the next volume of Harlot's Ghost, his epic novel about the CIA.
I think we now have an answer. Ted Kennedy's memoir True Compass has finally been published. If you grew up by the ocean, the passages that are most poignant concern his love of sailing on the sea, his memories of fleeing land after Bobby was killed and sailing from the Cape to Maine to be together with the sea and sky, as well as some of his last journeys out in his sailboat. In Washington, we have always heard that Ted knew about Jack's assassination and that before he died the truth would come out. I take it his account in the memoir was his truth. Chosen by the Kennedy family to meet with Earl Warren, since Bobby was engulfed with grief, he met with Chief Justice Warren. The debriefing took over five hours and Earl Warren filled Ted on all the details of the Commission's work including a critique of its shortcoming. In the end,writes Ted Kennedy the Commissions got it right. Later LBJ collared him and said it was the FBI's fault. They have interviewed Oswald and had him under surveillance but they failed to prevent the assassination. Unfortunately, the words as he wrote them ring true as the deaths of his brothers haunt the first half of the book and I think, knowing of his own impending death, he would have left another "truth" if he knew it.
The other event of my generation was Watergate, an episode in our history,along with the "secret invasion" of Cambodia, which broke the faith of a generation in the institutions of government. Another library has grown up around this third-rate burglary. Richard Nixon feared that DNC chairman Larry O'Brien, a lobbyist for Howard Hughes, knew about Hughes' on-going financial support of the President and would spill the beans and Nixon had to find out what O'Brien knew. The CIA and the military knew that Nixon wanted to re-organize the entire executive branch (see Dick Cheney) and they feared what he was up to with all the back channel negotiations going on with Moscow, the Vietnam Peace Talks and China so they got a bunch of former CIA hands to botch the operation to frame Nixon. Ted Kennedy himself plotted the overthrow of Nixon by planting Archibald Cox at the Justice Department so as to provoke the firings of the Special Prosecutor and set up a firestorm that would lead to Nixon's impeachment. Gordan Liddy speculated that Nixon had nothing to do with any of this. It was all John Dean's fault. Dean was dating Maureen, his soon-to-be wife, who Liddy speculates was working for an escot service. Dean knowing that Spencer Oliver, whose office was actually bugged, procured women for visiting Democratic officials to Washington, would have records about these transactions. So Dean ordered the break-in to destroy records that would be damaging to his wife's reputation and then snicked on President Nixon. After a ten-year lawsuit, this line of the Watergate story proved false and Liddy lost in court to Dean. So we are left the questions: Did Nixon order the break-in?--he said for years he didn't; what were they trying to find?; and what's on the 18 and half minute erasure of the tape?
And now we know and it's a bummer. John Dean in revising his old book Blind Ambition uncovered what people were looking for. Richard Nixon had just returned from China, which he considered his greatest triumph, only to be confronted with allegations by Democrats that the anti-trust suit against ITT had been dismissed because of bribery. Nixon furious that his greatest moment had been upstaged heard that there were allegations about kickbacks involved in the Democratic convention scheduled to take place in Miami. He loudly complained he wanted this information so the White House could use it against the Democrats. Hence the political arm of the White House went to work and bugged the wrong guy's office. They were supposed to bug Larry O'Brien's office and get papers documenting the kickback scheme. But then they were blown and Watergate for all its metaphorical power over all these years really was a third-rate burglary and Richard Nixon really didn't order the break-in. And the whole iss of bribes over ITT is false, also. And there were no kickbacks involved in the Democratic Convention either. And George McGovern did not receive campaign funds from Fidel Castro as one of the Watergate burglars claimed.
In the next two years with the advance of technology, acoustic scientists believe we will be able to reconstruct the erased 18 and a half minutes. I'm sure they will be disappointing.
Now the conspracies lack the panache of those in the past. We are left now with Orly Taitz and her band of wingnuts and 9/11 truthers arguing that our President was born in Mombassa, Kenya (the city was then in Zanzibar) despite his mother never having been in that country. The court rejected her latest lawsuit and threatens to fine her $10,000 and a lawyer in Ohio is suing to have her disbarred. Conspiracies are not what they were.
Conspiracies do exist, of course. But the most dreadful thing is that inexplicable and horror events happen, which are deprived of any serious meaning because of the basic ineptitude of human beings. We are much more the objects of chance, whimsy and fate than we want to believe.
The assassinations of President Kennedy, his brother Robert and Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr. shaped my generation and ushered in an age of upheaval in our politics. Shortly after the assasination of her husband, Mrs Jackie Kennedy opined," How awful is it that Jack was killed by some little Communist shit?" And we have all dutifully fell in line trying to make it that he wasn't. The killing of the President has produced whole libraries of alternative theories, films and pieces of good to great literature. We have Oliver Stone's JFK, which posits the assassination was an inside job by the shadowy world of the spooks and military because President Kennedy wanted to end the Vietnam War, which we now know he did. Charles McCarry wrote a wonderful spy novel Tears of Autumn, which posits the Kennedy assassination was the product of Indochinese heroin dealers linked to the Diem family, who hired a French assassin. James Ellroy in Ten Thousand Cold Men writes with his full amp style of a complex plot involving Howard Hughes, CIA personnel and the mafia. Non-fiction books link the Gambino family, Jimmy Hoffa and the New Orleans mob into a fantastic, yet plausible plot of revenge for a series of perceived slights and wrongs. Conservatives speculate about the role of Fidel Castro and cite LBJ's dark interview near the end of his life, saying "We were running Murder,Inc. down there (in Cuba), anything could have happened". Much to my dismay, Norman Mailer, whom we could trust in these dark matters, wrote Oswald near the end of his life, basically confirming Jackie's original statement. But I thought Mailer had sold out to the spooks so he could finish the next volume of Harlot's Ghost, his epic novel about the CIA.
I think we now have an answer. Ted Kennedy's memoir True Compass has finally been published. If you grew up by the ocean, the passages that are most poignant concern his love of sailing on the sea, his memories of fleeing land after Bobby was killed and sailing from the Cape to Maine to be together with the sea and sky, as well as some of his last journeys out in his sailboat. In Washington, we have always heard that Ted knew about Jack's assassination and that before he died the truth would come out. I take it his account in the memoir was his truth. Chosen by the Kennedy family to meet with Earl Warren, since Bobby was engulfed with grief, he met with Chief Justice Warren. The debriefing took over five hours and Earl Warren filled Ted on all the details of the Commission's work including a critique of its shortcoming. In the end,writes Ted Kennedy the Commissions got it right. Later LBJ collared him and said it was the FBI's fault. They have interviewed Oswald and had him under surveillance but they failed to prevent the assassination. Unfortunately, the words as he wrote them ring true as the deaths of his brothers haunt the first half of the book and I think, knowing of his own impending death, he would have left another "truth" if he knew it.
The other event of my generation was Watergate, an episode in our history,along with the "secret invasion" of Cambodia, which broke the faith of a generation in the institutions of government. Another library has grown up around this third-rate burglary. Richard Nixon feared that DNC chairman Larry O'Brien, a lobbyist for Howard Hughes, knew about Hughes' on-going financial support of the President and would spill the beans and Nixon had to find out what O'Brien knew. The CIA and the military knew that Nixon wanted to re-organize the entire executive branch (see Dick Cheney) and they feared what he was up to with all the back channel negotiations going on with Moscow, the Vietnam Peace Talks and China so they got a bunch of former CIA hands to botch the operation to frame Nixon. Ted Kennedy himself plotted the overthrow of Nixon by planting Archibald Cox at the Justice Department so as to provoke the firings of the Special Prosecutor and set up a firestorm that would lead to Nixon's impeachment. Gordan Liddy speculated that Nixon had nothing to do with any of this. It was all John Dean's fault. Dean was dating Maureen, his soon-to-be wife, who Liddy speculates was working for an escot service. Dean knowing that Spencer Oliver, whose office was actually bugged, procured women for visiting Democratic officials to Washington, would have records about these transactions. So Dean ordered the break-in to destroy records that would be damaging to his wife's reputation and then snicked on President Nixon. After a ten-year lawsuit, this line of the Watergate story proved false and Liddy lost in court to Dean. So we are left the questions: Did Nixon order the break-in?--he said for years he didn't; what were they trying to find?; and what's on the 18 and half minute erasure of the tape?
And now we know and it's a bummer. John Dean in revising his old book Blind Ambition uncovered what people were looking for. Richard Nixon had just returned from China, which he considered his greatest triumph, only to be confronted with allegations by Democrats that the anti-trust suit against ITT had been dismissed because of bribery. Nixon furious that his greatest moment had been upstaged heard that there were allegations about kickbacks involved in the Democratic convention scheduled to take place in Miami. He loudly complained he wanted this information so the White House could use it against the Democrats. Hence the political arm of the White House went to work and bugged the wrong guy's office. They were supposed to bug Larry O'Brien's office and get papers documenting the kickback scheme. But then they were blown and Watergate for all its metaphorical power over all these years really was a third-rate burglary and Richard Nixon really didn't order the break-in. And the whole iss of bribes over ITT is false, also. And there were no kickbacks involved in the Democratic Convention either. And George McGovern did not receive campaign funds from Fidel Castro as one of the Watergate burglars claimed.
In the next two years with the advance of technology, acoustic scientists believe we will be able to reconstruct the erased 18 and a half minutes. I'm sure they will be disappointing.
Now the conspracies lack the panache of those in the past. We are left now with Orly Taitz and her band of wingnuts and 9/11 truthers arguing that our President was born in Mombassa, Kenya (the city was then in Zanzibar) despite his mother never having been in that country. The court rejected her latest lawsuit and threatens to fine her $10,000 and a lawyer in Ohio is suing to have her disbarred. Conspiracies are not what they were.
Conspiracies do exist, of course. But the most dreadful thing is that inexplicable and horror events happen, which are deprived of any serious meaning because of the basic ineptitude of human beings. We are much more the objects of chance, whimsy and fate than we want to believe.
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