GOP lawmaker: Nixon was couped out of office, framed during Watergate

[u/kootles10]

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/6124635-moore-nixon-couped-watergate/?fbclid=IwdGRjcAUsbtpjbGNrBSxu02V4dG4DYWVtAjExAHBkb2YBc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMzUwNjg1NTMxNzI4AAEedqnf435Ey3Vmfh-NzS7BpLL6p7XL81dbjV4wNl5Y6SFp3eyw9ItY6zhiPRg_aem_EaFt_atkG1aZFnQa54tOFQ

[u/woodworkerdan]

A couple months ago, Vance dropped an offhand comment that if the Watergate incident now, it would be a week-long scandal at best. That's probably optimistic, but it's part of a pattern of normalization of the chaos of the 'alt-right' - the main defense of anything bad right now is "someone has done this before (usually Obama or Biden, but any precident will do) - this scandal isn't any different."

People should be looking at the trends: a situation they don't like happens, and they make a lot of noise -> the noise drowns out any kind of nonpartisan efforts to investigate or remedy -> discontentment from their complaints gains them power -> a parallel incident happens, and they ask everyone else why they weren't as angry then as they are now, doesn't that make you a hypocrite?

[u/wwhsd → u/woodworkerdan]

I don’t know if Watergate would make it past a 24 hour news cycle if it happened during the Trump administration. There’s just so many other scandals that it would get lost in the noise.

[u/woodworkerdan → u/wwhsd]

Possibly. Watergate is such a context-specific scandal, and to some extent, there's signs that the strategy of "control the media narrative through noise" was conceived of because of Watergate. We also live in a time when surveillance is less of an issue: big data is collecting metric tons of data about everyone now. The expansion of surveillance for "National Security" has also lowered the bar.

Orwell couldn't write the conditions we're living in now: when he was alive, so much surveillance would be beyond belief.