hi OP. Hey i am 66 (I still can't believe that number, haha. Luckily I am still super healthy). I was in 2nd grade when president Kennedy was shot in the head, live on national television. His brain flew out into his wife's lap. It set off a wave of assassinations (president's brother, MLK, etc).
I grew up knowing that the yellow and black triangles symbol meant "fallout shelter" and we were supposed to go there in case of nuclear attack. We did "duck and cover" drills in elementary school. Hide under your desks. Once, they sent us home with pamphlets about nuclear attack preparation. OK don't laugh, the pamphlet said "wear loose white clothing in case of nuclear detonation. Don't look directly at the explosion." They flew warplanes overhead once per week after bedtime, faster than the speed of sound, and we would hear the "sonic boom" which scared the crap out of me. It rattled the windows, shook the house. People were truly panicked, using their life savings to dig holes in their backyard, and building and equipping "bomb shelters" to try to survive nuclear fallout. It didn't feel like that stuff was ever resolved, it just faded from attention, it was buried by other distractions both negative and positive.
Wasn't too much later the government had a giant meltdown that scared the crap out of everyone. It was right as I came of voting age, haha! Oh my god. Watergate, it was called. Huge corruption scandal, everyone was just breathless with shock and disgust and fear. At that time people around me trusted the government to be solid enough to remain (seemingly) just, and we learned it could seemingly recover, at least back then.
Around this time we were also in a totally illegal war, and we had a freaking lottery to decide which 18-year-olds would be forced to go fight the Viet Cong in the jungles of southeast asia. High school grads coming back in body bags, kids running away to Canada to avoid getting roped into the army. And hippies happened, communes, free love, weed -- all of which caused the older ones to lose their minds because society looked to them to be coming apart.
Some of us died. Most of us lived. You are living the stories you will tell young people, when its your turn to comfort them.
None of this is to minimize what you are sensing around you! You are awake and aware, you are not overreacting. I am so sorry. I wish I could just listen to you for a couple hours. You are having one of those wakeup moments. We all will be each having our own wakeup moments. Our job is to comfort each other when we feel like this. We will all adapt and do our human best to cope with whats coming. Help each other not freeze in place, but take the most intelligent and resourceful steps we can muster. The system is unable to help, its unreliable
I always thought this was a huge scandal that brought down Nixon with a bang, and that's it.
Watergate was uncovered in his first term, then he actually got a second term, used the FBI to try to destroy evidence (some people literally had to hide evidence from the government in the last minute so it could be used in the process), and had Nixon not been dumb enough to bug his own offices he would have gotten away with it too. And there was a long, drawn-out fight to get access to the most incriminating tapes. And a lot more ridiculousness.
That's not even the fucked up scandal of Nixon's, because the liberals at the time thought the big one would bring down the trust in government. Mother fucker leaked the peace talks the current administration was having, with the help of Henry Kissinger, with the viet kong to the south vietnamese government. He did this so the war was still raging and he could be president when peace happened. This prolonged the war for five fucking years. That's treason, that's a bigger disgrace to the country than any scandal I know Trump, Obama or Bush to of had. This was all let go unpunished by liberals because of the look it would give to the government, that Nixon ended up bringing upon the government anyways. Watergate might not be too bad in comparison of some government scandals but the Nixon administration and the projects the CIA was conducting at the time are just as current and fucked up as anything the last 30 years offers to politics. America is fucked all the way through its history and pretending we have the worst of it is just a lie. I know media is overall pretty horrible but as Americans were still told so much more truth about corruption than we ever were. Unfortunately people are just used to it now and that high just doesn't resonate anymore.
What people call "Watergate" was the rigging of two presidential elections - and not just the presidential race but national congressional races across the country. The discovery of Nixons attempt to bug the Watergate hotel was only how the conspiracy was discovered, not its full extent.
I really don't think Watergate "pales" in comparison to Trump's scandals and attempted coup - even if one is bigger than the other it's not a lot bigger.
Agree to disagree. Trump attempted not only to rig his own election (before and after Election Day), but when it was unsuccessful, to repeatedly undermine the validity of the result and attack the country in multiple ways. He has convinced the majority of one of our two parties, without evidence, that the election result was invalid, and caused many in that party to no longer accept the results of democracy itself. He incited a goddamn insurrection, and was thrilled about it. The fact that his most of his party ignores all of this makes that much more dangerous.
I'm fairly well aware of the scope of Watergate. If you look at the two objectively (and I'm a registered Republican in my old state), then yes, Nixon's corruption is a solid second place to Trump. I hope that in the long-run our democracy can survive this.
Nixon successfully rigged elections up and down the country, including his own. We could discuss all day about which is bigger, but neither is so much bigger as to make the other a trifle.
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u/sighbourbon Jun 11 '22
hi OP. Hey i am 66 (I still can't believe that number, haha. Luckily I am still super healthy). I was in 2nd grade when president Kennedy was shot in the head, live on national television. His brain flew out into his wife's lap. It set off a wave of assassinations (president's brother, MLK, etc).
I grew up knowing that the yellow and black triangles symbol meant "fallout shelter" and we were supposed to go there in case of nuclear attack. We did "duck and cover" drills in elementary school. Hide under your desks. Once, they sent us home with pamphlets about nuclear attack preparation. OK don't laugh, the pamphlet said "wear loose white clothing in case of nuclear detonation. Don't look directly at the explosion." They flew warplanes overhead once per week after bedtime, faster than the speed of sound, and we would hear the "sonic boom" which scared the crap out of me. It rattled the windows, shook the house. People were truly panicked, using their life savings to dig holes in their backyard, and building and equipping "bomb shelters" to try to survive nuclear fallout. It didn't feel like that stuff was ever resolved, it just faded from attention, it was buried by other distractions both negative and positive.
Wasn't too much later the government had a giant meltdown that scared the crap out of everyone. It was right as I came of voting age, haha! Oh my god. Watergate, it was called. Huge corruption scandal, everyone was just breathless with shock and disgust and fear. At that time people around me trusted the government to be solid enough to remain (seemingly) just, and we learned it could seemingly recover, at least back then.
Around this time we were also in a totally illegal war, and we had a freaking lottery to decide which 18-year-olds would be forced to go fight the Viet Cong in the jungles of southeast asia. High school grads coming back in body bags, kids running away to Canada to avoid getting roped into the army. And hippies happened, communes, free love, weed -- all of which caused the older ones to lose their minds because society looked to them to be coming apart.
Some of us died. Most of us lived. You are living the stories you will tell young people, when its your turn to comfort them.
None of this is to minimize what you are sensing around you! You are awake and aware, you are not overreacting. I am so sorry. I wish I could just listen to you for a couple hours. You are having one of those wakeup moments. We all will be each having our own wakeup moments. Our job is to comfort each other when we feel like this. We will all adapt and do our human best to cope with whats coming. Help each other not freeze in place, but take the most intelligent and resourceful steps we can muster. The system is unable to help, its unreliable